Directorial entitlement comes close to derailing this fascinating tale where it’s not just the criminals who have lost their moral compass. I should have known what I was letting myself in for in terms of cinematic style as this movie was preceded by a trailer for Lance Oppenheim’s more acclaimed You Can See Everything (2026) which was filled with giant close-ups.
Giant heads abound here but these close-ups, much larger than normal, rarely provide the viewer with any more character information that ordinary-sized ones, and instead detract from the impact by effectively concentrating more on style than substance. Added to that the director has a predilection for the kind of grainy footage that was standard in 1970s crime pictures. Other throwbacks include just plain weird experiments with film exposure.
Which is a shame because it makes this movie, which in any case given the subject matter, a difficult watch an unnecessarily more difficult one. Nobody comes out of this well, not even the supposed good guys. Vigilantes, hounding paedophiles, have decided to fund their endeavors by filming the capture not for the purposes of evidence but to satisfy audience prurience by punishing offenders by putting their faces on television, the modern equivalent, we are smugly told, of those committing misdemeanours in the olden days being put in the stocks in the village square.
But you wonder just how many of the good guys would deserve a similar fate and to some extent stuffed full of arrogance and a complete lack of self-awareness virtually everything they film exposes them as venal characters.
Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson), real-life host of the real-life To Catch a Predator series (2004-2007), is a mean-minded, occasionally deranged, unfaithful, ruthless operator who checks out himself on Google. Obsessed with becoming a bigger player on television, he’s carved himself out a career as an accountant’s version of Sylvester Stallone or Clint Eastwood in making the villains pay. Having snookered the offenders, he walks in on them like a presenter on This Is Your Life and confronts them with their crimes while parading them on national television.
Eventually, he catches the eye of the big boss at NBC who wants to upgrade his show and put it on primetime to compete with ABC’s megahit Lost (2004-2010). That means finding bigger bad guys and adding further pressure to a program already bursting at the anxiety seams.
While Hansen and producer Andie Bender (Merritt Weaver) view themselves as the good guys they see nothing meretricious in using as “Decoy Dan” young actor Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo) who can effectively come across as much younger than his years with this freckled childish face and high-pitched voice teenager. Dan’s job is to play the unwitting child welcoming abusers into his home.
Neither Bender nor Hansen, more interested in filming as much shock as possible, explain to the young man exactly what he’s letting himself in for. That deception, as far as the principals are concerned, is worth it to see the look on Dan’s face when confronted with an erection.
Eventually, forced to look for bigger prey to satisfy the ratings, the producers locate the “big whale”, a nationally-known politician who, rather than give in to the indignity of appearing on the show, blows his brains out.
The big problem is that all the characters come over as shallow. We never find out the reason for Hansen’s obsession with exposing predators except some loony nonsense of seeing an actual monster in India. His home life is very sketchy as is his affair. Andie just comes over as a small-screen thug, life ruled by ambition.
So while this is very even-handed in casting as harsh a light on the good guys as much as the bad guys, the stylistic mess messes around with what should have been a more straightforward and more interesting picture.
Robert Pattinson (The Odyssey, 2026) is again excellent, probably the only topline actor making a thing out of playing creepy characters. Merritt Weaver (Christy, 2025) is superb as the producer with no idea how sleazy she comes across and Skyler Gisondo (Jimmy Olsen in Superman, 2025) is heart-breaking as the innocent lad witnessing depravity.
Written by debutant Ajon Singh based on an Esquire magazine article by Luke Dittrich.
Compelling, yes, but be warned about the stylistic intrusion.
