Catching predators in the name of fame
⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 4
Documentarian Lance Oppenheim (“Ren Faire,” “Spermworld”) steps into the narrative feature-scape with this lurid submersion into the early years of online predation, where chatrooms were used as Venus flytraps to snare underage targets and goad them into real-life meetups. The scummy underbelly, as Oppenheim depicts it in “Primetime,” isn’t seen so much in dirty basement dungeons as in the relish Dateline NBC reporter Chris Hansen and his crew on “To Catch a Predator” take in the lewd exchanges as they try to lure the next would-be predator.
Hansen and members of an online activist group baited a potential perpetrator online and goaded him or her into a real-life meetup at a camera-rigged house. They used a decoy (a paid actor posing as the underage target) to let the miscreant inside before Hansen, “Candid Camera”-style, sauntered in and cornered the suspect. The show was filled with quotes from their salacious online transcripts and questions about intent, as the cops waited outside, ready to swarm in.
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