I remember the moment when To Catch a Predator no longer felt the same to me. I was visiting my friend in another state and I thought it would be fun to watch the show after a late-night outing. She hadn’t heard of it before, so I pulled up a trailer (or maybe it was a viral clip from an episode) on my phone. After the trailer ended, she said, “I don’t think I could watch this. This is kinda disgusting.”
I don’t recall my exact reaction. I may have stammered some sort of excuse to mitigate my embarrassment. Maybe in reaction to any other show, I probably would have felt the need to hash out our feelings and differences about it. But somewhere in my mind, the switch that I had overlooked for a long while had finally flipped. I was in middle school when the show first aired. I never watched or discussed it with anyone else. I never laughed at it. I never felt an internal swell of duty to uphold the show’s proclaimed mission to reveal the evil among us. I’m not even sure if I had ever felt bad for the guys. Yet I watched the show until it no longer aired.
For those who may not be privy to this primetime phenomenon, To Catch a Predator was a Dateline reality TV show about ensnaring child sex predators on camera. The sting operations took place in different towns and was a collaboration between the local law enforcement and an online organization called Perverted-Justice. The show lured predators (mostly, if not all, men if I recall) from the computer screens to a rented house, where the “bait” (adult actors who pass for teenagers) try their best to have the men admit their intentions to meet a teenager alone. Once the intention is clear enough, NBC journalist Chris Hansen welcomes himself into the room. Fear will immediately strike the men’s faces: sometimes because they did not expect a grown adult in a suit to come in and sometimes, in later episodes, because they recognize Hansen. The men have a talk with Hansen, which tends to run the emotional spectrum from speechlessness to sobbing. Eventually, the men are permitted to leave the house, where police officers are waiting outside to arrest them. It is always a team of police officers.
As the documentary Predators states, the show caught like wildfire across the country. A large claim of its popularity was attributed to the jaw-dropping disbelief that this was actually happening. I was part of the audience that knew these things to be true – that adults did lurk around the Internet to hurt children. I’m shocked that people were shocked.
But the aim of this documentary isn’t to discuss the glory days of law being on the public’s side. Predators is the kind of thinkpiece that addresses the uneasiness of that show while introducing the dangers of the media-moral vigilante dilemma. It’s also one of the trickiest topics to talk about, and one that requires caution. Personally, I understand the people who find catharsis in To Catch a Predator, and I wholeheartedly and genuinely support their feelings. But for Predators filmmaker David Osit, and for myself, this documentary feels like a much-needed confrontation.
The first part of Predators explains the premise, origins, and effects of the show by letting the episodes (aired footage and B-rolls) play out. The “bait” actors, who were surprisingly just actors, are interviewed. While it’s relieving that they were not actual teenagers, the psychological impact of talking to would-be predators is nothing short of unbelievable and, at the time, not fully grasped by the show. In one operation, an actress discloses that while speaking to a man who was worried about traps, all she could think about in her head was, “Go home, just go home.”
The lead-up to the show’s eventual ending is catalyzed by the fatal self-inflicted gunshot of an assistant DA who had intended to meet up with a “bait” actor. The episode is introduced by the actor involved, who shares that he would never reenact that day for a million dollars. Though the episode did air, I had never seen it. The experience of watching the unaired footage of the show crew heading over to the DA’s house with armed police and seeing the moments when the show realizes that a death has taken place felt raw, for a lack of more descriptive words.
Predators then catches up to today’s world. The show’s ripple effect gets to YouTube personalities creating spinoffs, giving their own personalized delivery of the law (“You’ve been Skeet’ed,” Skeeter Jean, a featured copycat, says on screen after a sting takes place). For most of the documentary, Osit lets the footage and interviews speak for themselves, letting us come to our own conclusions — or rather, the inconclusiveness of the show’s many gray areas. Eventually, Osit inserts himself when he asks famous ethnographer/professor Mark de Rond about the conflicting roles between public service and entertainment. Initially, de Rond’s presence felt out of place considering how Predators’ self-contained narrative was powerful on its own, excluding opinions from uninvolved celebrities and experts trying to dissect it into fun soundbites. It was until I realize that Osit’s voice had to come out, especially in the documentary’s central sit down interview with Hansen.
The documentary is indubitably well-executed. It forbids sensationalism from taking hold of the story and doesn’t relent to pure victimizing of the predators. The somber focus of law and society’s perspective on punishment and viral-capturing the darkest moments feel like the perfect retrospective capsule of the show — a phenomenon that doesn’t feel like it should have happened so publicly, but still lingers to today’s cancel culture of the everyman. I also believe that there will be people who will see this documentary, read this or other reviews, and find themselves in complete opposition to the thought of sympathizing with predators. I, too, agree with that sentiment. The guttural pit of unresolved answers from Predators is a normal reaction. At the very least, the documentary asks you to is to take a seat.
Predators
2025
dir. David Osit
96 min.
Opens Friday, 10/3 @ Alamo Drafthouse Boston Seaport
