We’ve all heard “if it bleeds, it leads,” the old saw about modern news coverage. But it never had to be literal blood. What we like most is spectacle–the titillating buzz of transgression, writ large. Sure, we all love an inspirational feel-good story, but it doesn’t really tickle us like scandal and shame. In my review of the movie Primetime, the A24 latest, we’ll take a look at its depiction of a show that took that to its (never bleeding) heart.
Primetime: There’s A Monster at the End of This Book
When I was in elementary school, there was a house that lurked on the edges of our playground. My classmates told me an old man lived there. He stole children, they also told me, and of course, I believed them. This was the height of stranger danger, and the boogeyman was as real a threat as quicksand or the Bermuda Triangle. That threat may have faded somewhat in our collective American conscience, even with stories like the abduction of Polly Klaas, but it roared back into life with the popularity of the internet. This time, though, the monsters didn’t have to break into your house, like Klaas’s abductor. They could slither in through the phone line and lure out your children, instead.
In January 2002, for instance, Alicia Kozakiewicz, a 13-year-old girl in Pittsburgh, snuck out to meet the 38-year-old man who had been grooming her online. He would hold her captive for three days, broadcasting live as he assaulted her, until her rescue. Later that year, in December, a 47-year-old man abducted and murdered another 13-year-old girl, Arkansas’s Kacie Woody, who had been chatting online with him. Or at least, the young man she believed him to be.
Stories like this and alleged near-misses, the kind of internet legends that populated your least favorite aunt’s e-mail forwards, became part of the common culture. At the same time, reality TV was booming. The United States was mired in war in the Middle East, where the horror of Abu Ghraib had been a headline story earlier in the year. It was into this world that NBC’s Dateline‘s To Catch A Predator — and the show within the movie in Primetime — was born.
How to Catch a Predator – A24 Film Style
Before it was its own thing, it was “Dangerous Web,” a rather innocuous-sounding segment on Dateline. However, it quickly became the most popular part of the show and was renamed as To Catch a Predator. Teaming up with the online activist group Perverted-Justice, the formula was simple. PJ would trawl chat rooms and the like for “adults who try to meet teens online,” passing along the logs to the team at Dateline. They, in turn, would set up bait houses in residential neighborhoods, where a teen decoy would arrange to meet the titular predators. The decoy would make bubbly conversation for seconds on end, before disappearing for…reasons. Then Chris Hansen would appear.
Emerging from the narrative shadows, he would mesmerize the predator into compliance. Instead of shutting up and leaving, the men would, in the most memed line of the show, “have a seat,” and submit to Hansen’s interrogation. They would stumble over explanations for conversations that could never be rationally explained. In the early days of the series, they would then just leave. However, it didn’t take long for the police to get on board. Now that was exciting. A hit of dopamine. A bit of raw meat to keep the gaties at bay. But the audience builds up a callus, develops a tolerance, and needs a bigger dose to get the same feeling. One can either resist and watch your show start to slip in the ratings, or you can think of ways to raise the stakes. Maybe you don’t need a bigger boat. You need a bigger fish.
Committing True Crime In Primetime
This is the environment in which we find our main players, after we’ve fast-forwarded through the debut and rise of To Catch a Predator. They’ve built a cultural juggernaut, but what price does it demand? Del (Phoebe Bridgers), a decoy, is initially enthusiastic about the mission of the show, for example. It’s hard to pretend like you’re just helping victims, though, when you’re selling suggestive merch. And new decoy Dan (Skyler Gisondo) falls in line after a bumpy inaugural episode, but you can practically see his soul dying by degrees.
But hey, we’ve gotta make money, right? Plus, at least we’re doing what it says on the tin–catching predators! And then they go away where they can’t hurt anyone! And then, as we used to say as 13-year-olds, you woke up. Nowhere, perhaps, is this dissonance so glaring, so fluorescent, as the sting in Murphy, TX. This is where the most infamous incident in the show’s history will unfold. This is where they intersect with Bill Conradt (Alex Winter).
He’s (seemingly) the biggest whale of all. Xavier (Matthew Maher) of Perverted-Justice keeps talking him up like he’s the first domino in a massive government conspiracy. (The modern Satanic Panic never dies; it just pivots to video.) In reality, Conradt was an assistant district attorney living in small town Texas, hardly an agent of the Illuminati. And unlike the hordes of perverts who are all too happy to show up to a minor’s home with a sixer of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, the user id later linked to Conradt is hesitant. So they go to him, and then all hell breaks loose.
Even before their TV angst has a body count, though, there’s a desperation to Hansen (Robert Pattinson). He kind of wants legitimacy, but what he really wants is praise and power. Dateline co-anchor Stone Phillips (Bill Heck), who is, as his name suggests, handsomely chiseled, sons him in the halls of NBC. He doesn’t have the vision, though. We’re “cleansing the world of an ancient evil,” as Hansen tells Don. There’s probably a part of him, too, that genuinely believes that.
Does Primetime Ask Significant Questions Or Just Superficial Ones?
As Hansen, Pattinson is electric and intense. So much of Primetime rests on him, including visually, as we keep cutting to close-ups of his face. He stares back at us. Are we the abyss or is he? The movie suggests it’s a little bit of both. It doesn’t dig deep enough to be sure, though.
Strong performances like Pattinson’s buoy the film. He, along with the always outstanding Merritt Wever as producer Andie, give depth to a story that ends up being a mite bit more superficial than it should be. It’s flashy, it looks good, and it’s entertaining, but there’s an almost hollow center. That’s in keeping with its characters, though, who in the wake of disaster, immediately start brainstorming how to repackage a nightmare.
And it’s in keeping with the ultimate outcome of that sting in Texas. Besides the tangle of legal questions regarding Conradt, all of the busts police made were unusable. The predators might have been fodder for our insatiable appetite for reality trash, they might have been a fascinating spectacle–but that can’t mean much to future victims if the predators still roam free. And that might be one of the biggest perversions of all.
Rating: 3.75/5
Primetime is now playing in theaters nationwide.
featured image via A24
One Comment on “Primetime Movie Review: Ready or Not”