6 Robert Pattinson Thrillers To Watch If You Like Primetime
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Robert Pattinson has spent years making it increasingly difficult to remember that he was once best known as Edward Cullen. Since Twilight, the actor has built one of the strangest and most interesting filmographies of any major star, bouncing between challenging independent movies and some of the best superhero movies of the decade.
Primetime gives Pattinson another opportunity to disappear into an unsettling real-world figure. Playing To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen, Pattinson enters a story about television, ambition, crime, and the increasingly blurry line between journalism and spectacle. It is territory well suited to an actor whose career has repeatedly gravitated toward the kind of morally messy characters found in the best psychological thrillers.
Anyone leaving Primetime wanting another Pattinson thriller therefore has plenty of options. His post-Twilight career includes grimy crime movies, dystopian nightmares, cerebral blockbusters, and one especially dark trip to Gotham City.
These six thrillers show just how comfortable Pattinson has become playing men who are difficult to trust, understand, or sometimes even tolerate.
Good Time
If Primetime leaves audiences impressed by Robert Pattinson's ability to make an increasingly questionable man impossible to stop watching, Good Time should be the first movie they put on next. Pattinson plays Connie Nikas, a small-time criminal who spends one disastrous night trying to free his brother after a botched robbery lands him in police custody.
Josh and Benny Safdie trap Connie inside a New York City that seems to become more hostile every time he makes another terrible decision. Pattinson gives the character enough nervous energy to power the entire movie, but Connie's greatest danger is his absolute confidence that he can somehow manipulate his way out of every new problem. The result is exhausting in exactly the way a great thriller should be.
The Batman
Pattinson's Bruce Wayne is less polished billionaire playboy than sleep-deprived obsessive. The Batman begins during his second year as Gotham's vigilante, when a serial killer calling himself the Riddler starts targeting powerful figures and leaving elaborate clues behind for Batman to solve.
That detective structure makes Matt Reeves' movie as much a crime thriller as a superhero blockbuster. Pattinson spends much of the film lurking through crime scenes and interrogating suspects as Bruce discovers how deeply his own family history is tangled in Gotham's corruption. The movie also established a version of the character strong enough to rank among the best superhero franchises launched in the last 10 years.
The Devil All The Time
Pattinson does not have the largest role in The Devil All the Time, but he makes an enormous impression as Preston Teagardin, a preacher whose outward respectability conceals something far uglier. Set across several decades in rural Ohio and West Virginia, the movie follows a collection of damaged characters whose lives gradually begin intersecting.
Teagardin gives Pattinson the opportunity to be spectacularly unpleasant. His distinctive voice and theatrical sermons initially make the preacher almost amusing, until his manipulation of the people around him reveals exactly what kind of man he is. The sprawling story is darker than a conventional crime thriller, but anyone drawn to Primetime's interest in public morality versus private ambition should find the comparison particularly interesting.
The Rover
The Rover takes place in an Australian future where economic collapse has left society barely functioning. Guy Pearce plays Eric, a hardened loner pursuing the men who stole his car, while Pattinson's Rey becomes an unlikely companion after being abandoned by the same criminals.
Rey is far removed from the controlled, ambitious characters Pattinson often plays. He is vulnerable, frightened, and frequently several steps behind everyone around him, which makes his relationship with Eric increasingly affecting. David Michôd essentially turns the thriller into a post-apocalyptic Western, sharing the stripped-down tension that powers many of the most suspenseful Western movies.
Tenet
Christopher Nolan's Tenet operates on a scale far removed from Primetime, but Pattinson once again proves extremely good at playing a man who knows considerably more than he initially reveals. He stars as Neil, an intelligence operative who joins John David Washington's Protagonist in an attempt to prevent a catastrophe involving technology capable of reversing the flow of time.
Trying to fully explain Tenet can become considerably harder than simply watching it. Beneath the inverted bullets and temporal mechanics, however, is a sleek espionage thriller built around trust. Pattinson gives Neil a relaxed charm that makes him unusually easy to like in such an intentionally disorienting movie. Nolan's fascination with cerebral genre filmmaking also runs through many of the sci-fi movies Christopher Nolan recommends.
The Lighthouse
Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse may sit closer to psychological horror than a traditional thriller, but few Pattinson movies create more tension from watching a man gradually lose his grip. Pattinson plays Ephraim Winslow, a young lighthouse keeper sent to a remote New England island with Willem Dafoe's domineering Thomas Wake.
Isolation quickly turns their working relationship into a volatile battle involving alcohol, secrets, superstition, and an increasingly suspicious lighthouse lantern. Pattinson matches Dafoe's enormous performance without attempting to imitate it, becoming progressively more feral as Winslow's sanity deteriorates. By the time the movie reaches its unforgettable final stretch, deciding exactly what happened almost matters less than surviving the experience alongside him.
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