Robert Pattinson's Primetime Leaves All The Critics Stunned

Robert Pattinson has been on an absolute tear, but his crowning achievement may just now be hitting theaters. "Primetime," the new A24 joint from director Lance Oppenheim, has been one of the year's most anticipated films since its debut trailer showed Pattinson in peak form as "To Catch a Predator" host Chris Hansen. And now that critics have seen "Primetime" in its entirety, the film is looking like a home run. Check out the video above for a full breakdown of what reviews are saying and what you need to know ahead of the movie's September 25 release date.

The short version is that "Primetime" is great. Oppenheim's direction and the film's claustrophobic style are gaining widespread praise, with many complimenting the precise visual homages to mid-2000s reality TV. Though technically a biopic, the film is shot more like a thriller, or even a horror movie, which makes sense given the material.

"'Primetime' is both a nightmarish psychological thriller and a pitch black comedy unpacking the very idea of Chris Hansen," Looper's own Dominic Griffin wrote in his review. And while Griffin, like a number of critics, cites a level of tension between the film's very real subject matter and its many creative liberties, the verdict seems to be that "Primetime" is far more successful than not.

At time of writing, "Primetime" holds an 89% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes' critical aggregator, pulling from 84 reviews. A lot of the praise targets Pattinson directly — with this being, most likely, "The Batman" actor's best shot at an Oscar yet. "Pattinson has a rare gift for playing the sort of man who would toss an old woman over the deck railing of the Titanic to claim her spot in a lifeboat, and he's been handed a motherlode of sleaze here," Matt Zoller Seitz wrote in a 3.5/4-star review for RogerEbert.com. Nicholas Barber of BBC called it "the best performance yet from the most intriguing actor of his generation," giving the film a perfect 5/5 stars.

While the general sentiment is quite strong, there is some disagreement as to how successful the film is with its larger, more ambitious thematic overtones. It is a decidedly more fictionalized drama than it is a biopic, and your mileage may vary. Peter Bradshaw gave the film a less favorable 2/5 in The Guardian, calling it, "A strangely overwrought and heavy-footed drama-thriller, which for all its elaborate neon-lit atmosphere of noir danger isn't at all sure what it wants to say about media or morality, or anything else."

For a complete dive into the critical reception to "Primetime" thus far, check out the full video above, and catch the film in theaters for yourself when it premieres on September 25.