Review ‘Primetime’: Hunt for Online Predators Becomes an Ahab-Like Pursuit

Watching A24’s recent release, Primetime, is a bit like eating one of the Fruit Roll-Ups that Chris Hansen, as portrayed by Robert Pattinson, feverishly snacks on throughout the movie: sugary, artificial, with a voice in the back of your head whispering, “Something isn’t right here.” The story is a plastic-wrapped Moby-Dick pursuit set early in the millennium. Something is lurking below the water, and Hansen is determined to drag his “whale” into the light, no matter the cost.

The film is a dramatization of the Dateline NBC series, To Catch a Predator, inspired by Luke Dittrich’s 2007 article recounting one of the show’s sting operations that resulted in the suicide of Bill Conradt, an assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, Texas.

About the Author

Raleigh Adams

Raleigh Adams is a recent graduate of Yale Divinity School. Her work has appeared in the Front Porch Republic, VoegelinView, and The Dispatch.

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Watching A24’s recent release, Primetime, is a bit like eating one of the Fruit Roll-Ups that Chris Hansen, as portrayed by Robert Pattinson, feverishly snacks on throughout the movie: sugary, artificial, with a voice in the back of your head whispering, “Something isn’t right here.” The story is a plastic-wrapped Moby-Dick pursuit set early in the millennium. Something is lurking below the water, and Hansen is determined to drag his “whale” into the light, no matter the cost.

The film is a dramatization of the Dateline NBC series, To Catch a Predator, inspired by Luke Dittrich’s 2007 article recounting one of the show’s sting operations that resulted in the suicide of Bill Conradt, an assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, Texas.