Words by JANE CROWTHER
Like Danny Boyle’s opener at this year’s Venice film festival, Ink, Lance Oppenheim’s cautionary tale entrenches with tabloid fodder and the consequences of audience blood-lust for it. Sleazy, lurid and uncomfortable, Primetime asks us what sensation we feel when unfettered sensationalism featuring real people reaches its inevitable, sad and avoidable conclusion. And it’s another gonzo baddie performance from Robert Pattinson, who is cornering the market in bug-eyed damaged goods with flamboyant personas.
Opening with Pattinson’s Chris Hansen repeating a mantra of ‘I will undress you, you will undress me’ with red-flag intensity as he preps to trap another potential paedophile on in 2006 Dateline NBC reality show, To Catch A Predator. While his team lures online creeps to an unassuming house before having them interact with a child decoy (Phoebe Bridger) to seal their fate, Hansen preps his big entrance. As the perps nibble at cookies in the kitchen, carrying their molestation paraphernalia, Hansen emerges like a sideshow magician, reading their grooming messages back to them. This is the gotcha moment, when power transfers – both to Hansen and his TV viewers – as the would-be molesters crumble in wailing shame. It’s exactly what the network wants and in Hansen’s fervor. As he towers over them asking ‘you see how this looks?’ in his idiosyncratic, practiced cadence, it’s clear it’s what he also lives for. He understands its potency, telling a fan on a plane that what he does is ‘a little bit worse’ than killing. Hansen is driven by jealousy for serious journalists at NBC, the chase for ratings and his need to preen. He demands numerous takes to find just the right superiority in his voiceovers and wakes his small children to make them watch his latest edit.
Arriving in this world with all the naivete of a child is Dan Plum (Skylar Gisondo), a fresh-faced struggling actor who is thrilled to get a gig, less so when his first day has him playing a teen boy honeytrap and confronting a man with whipped cream on his penis. Plum’s arc in getting over the shock of the depravity, his subsequent lean-in to the entrapment and, ultimately, the disillusionment is what drives the narrative. His experience of this particular section of TV is perhaps a wider comment on the craveness of the entertainment industry, as well an audiences invitation to check their own complicity. Through Dan’s eyes we watch as Hansen goes down the rabbit hole, his softly spoken, gum-chewing producer Andie (Merrit Weaver, excellent) manages up, and the biggest catchfish the show can land, their so-called ‘whale’, turns out to be newsworthy in all the worst ways.
Oppenheim isn’t subtle in his delivery, bathing everything in neon hues, holding unflattering close-ups and filming in Academy ratio to mimic the era’s TV screen dimensions. His casting is similarly on-the-nose with former child stars such as Jonathan Lipnicki and Alex Winter playing predators, recalling the way Patrick Swayze tapped into his cultural currency in Donnie Darko. And a flashback revealing Hansen’s Indian origin story as a media vigilante doesn’t quite work, but nevertheless adds layers of ick to the endeavour.
‘There used to be a pillory in every civilized town,’ Hansen prognosticates. ‘Now there’s a TV in every home’ and later he asks, ‘what would’ve happened if I wasn’t here?’ Yes, we get it. Reality TV without guardrails and an audiences’ inability to turn it off is a recipe for harm. So in that respect, Primetime has little new to say about our greed for ‘if-it-bleeds-it-leads’ journalism. But like Hansen’s hypnotic show, it’s almost impossible to turn away from. Especially when Pattinson is theatrically spitting out mouthwash and curling his tongue round the word ‘cock’ in a manner that feels destined for more memes. Dirty, undeniable entertainment.
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of A24
Primetime premiered at the 83rd Venice film festival