Editor's note: The below review contains content that may be triggering for some readers, including references to pedophilia and sexual predation.
One of the worst casualties of the streaming era is how independent documentary filmmaking has fallen even more to the wayside than before. Prior to Netflix, there was the odd documentary that would break into the mainstream. Titles like West of Memphis,Blackfish, and Dear Zachary, not to mention all of Michael Moore’s work, were widely acclaimed by critics, audiences, festival juries, and even the Academy Awards. But since the major streamers have cornered the market with their seemingly endless slew of docuseries on famed serial killers, a documentary movie that isn’t focused on one man’s life of heinous crimes feels more rare than ever. That’s what makes David Osit’s Predators so vital. It’s not only counterprogramming to the same formulaic true crime series that streaming platforms continue to churn out, but it’s also in direct dialog with these shows and the audience's unrelenting obsession with them.
Looking at the legacy left behind by the widely popular NBC Dateline segment To Catch a Predator, Osit’s film explores the intersection of law enforcement, media, and fame, how they become distorted, and the destructive consequences. Predators is a pensive and intelligent work that reveals how hellish and unreal our world can be by plainly filming everyday people. Through interviews with those connected to the show and ethnographer Mark de Rond, it exposes the repercussions of contorting very severe issues such as pedophilia into popular entertainment, while also approaching some of America’s most pressing problems, like mass incarceration and the country’s fractured justice system, with nuance.
Osit's Documentary Examines the Dangerous Legacy of 'To Catch a Predator'
Image via NBCUniversal
As a non-American viewer with barely any prior knowledge of To Catch a Predator or its concept, the first few minutes of Predators made me feel like I had entered another dimension. A phone call plays between an older man and an extremely young-sounding girl, coquettishly talking about her pink toenail polish, which audibly turns the man on. If you’re unfamiliar with To Catch a Predator, it was a segment that was broadcast nationally in the U.S. in the mid-2000s, and the formula was as follows: The production team would lure child predators online while posing as young teenage boys or girls; they would then invite said predators to a house where a young-looking adult actor would meet and bait them for a few minutes before your classic white male attractive TV host, the legendary Chris Hansen, would come out and interrogate the individual.
It should be noted that Chris Hansen is a TV journalist who has no background in law or law enforcement. After humiliating the predator further, he tells them they are “free to go” and lets them walk out the door so the camera team can get the perfect shot of real-life police officers tackling them to the ground and arresting them. The show became a national sensation in the 2000s, not just because it was widely entertaining and drew in the masses every week, but because it was packaged as a public service announcement: A lesson to parents about the dangers that the internet posed to their children. Hansen was lauded as a superhero — a man more powerful than police officers, and the face of the “gotya” TV moment that people are still addicted to 20 years later in the age of TikTok.
Osit maintains a firm guiding hand through his documentary; just when the raw footage of men’s lives being destroyed for entertainment and pedophilia is exploited for shock value, we cut back to conversations with de Rond, who laments what we’ve just seen and the deeper implications of it on society as a whole. Both de Rond and Osit are careful not to position themselves as didactic intellectuals reprimanding this culture of true crime entertainment. They are merely asking the basic questions that productions like To Catch a Predator ignore: ‘Why do people commit these crimes?” “Is there any way for us to help them?” “How does this affect society at large?”
'Predators' Picks Up on the Nuances That 'To Catch a Predator' Ignored
Custom image by Collider Staff
Though not depicted on the original show, we see raw footage of the men after their capture, breaking down in police custody. This is when some viewers might wholly reject what Osit is doing here. However, Osit isn’t trying to turn the To Catch a Predator team into villains (they achieve that themselves) or the subjects of the show into heroes. Osit’s main objective is to eke out all the nuances and complexities of a very weighty, very hard-to-talk-about issue. Predators montages all the captured men asking for help, breaking down in tears because they don’t understand why they have the impulses they do. Again, Osit is careful not to strip these men of any wrongdoing, but he is reminding us that, whether we want to admit it or not, these people are still human, and in desperate need of help.
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The soothing, pondering interviews with de Rond make up the heart of the documentary and its approach. Predators has no answers, only questions. But de Rond’s gentle musings are a welcome antidote to the extreme and absolute nature of To Catch a Predator (and a reminder that this world isn’t completely devoid of empathy). While Predators is minimalist in its style, Osit doesn’t ignore any angle or perspective of the topics being discussed. Interviews with the actors asked to bait criminals by performing as a sexually available child, copycat Chris Hansen wannabes who think of themselves as vigilantes, and Hansen himself, ensure no stone is left unturned in a conversation with so many moving parts.
The raw footage is where we get the truly shocking evidence of a system gone haywire — a police lieutenant laughing and joking after a caught predator shoots himself as law enforcement fold in, a mother of an 18-year-old who was caught in one of Hansen’s more recent exploits, and victims of sexual abuse who justify their actions by their trauma all weave together to form a compelling portrait of just how distorted America’s justice system is, and how the media has had a very firm hand in this calamity.
'Predators' Is Damning Evidence of America's Broken Justice System
Image by Jovelle Tamayo via Sundance Institute
Osit doesn’t spoon-feed us what to think or believe; the interviews are enough to guide us to our own conclusions, but people’s refusal or lack of consideration for certain perspectives speaks even louder. To Catch a Predator and Hansen never had any interest in trying to get to the root of why child sexual abuse is so rampant, or whether these people can be rehabilitated. A former attorney general casually says to the camera that he wishes he could take a gun and shoot these “sons of bitches” themselves. Even after years of working in the business of catching pedophiles, Hansen is at a loss as to why men commit these crimes, or if there are any rehabilitation methods that have proven to work. Predators is less of an investigation and more evidence that a topic this well-covered in the news is still so misunderstood.
Osit doesn’t lean on graphs, metrics, or statistics to get his point across. He justifies making this film through his sit-down interviews with these everyday people and following those turning crime and human despair into entertainment. As a man sits in the corner of a cheap motel room, crying about being suicidal over his sexual desires, a Chris Hansen YouTube copycat says to him, “You’ve been Skeeted.” Hansen is lauded as a superhero at CrimeCon (which in and of itself is a concept you need time to wrap your head around). Osit finds the surreal in realism, understanding that the average American person’s behavior is enough to prove his point.
When boiled down, Predators dispels any idea that the motivations behind this very bizarre community in media are for the greater good (as Hansen calls it), but a means for success and mass entertainment. Clicks, likes, viewership, Emmys — these are all of greater value than any step toward understanding why pedophilia happens. It’s a sickening portrait of a world gone mad, and all hope of understanding the nuances has been lost in the name of fame and gross entertainment. Some viewers may think Predators hypocritical given that it doesn’t make any strides to understand why this issue is so prevalent. However, as the documentary so deftly shows, asking questions can be much more difficult than providing answers.
Predators premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
Predators
David Osit crafts a pensive, empathetic documentary that ekes out the complexities of a sensitive topic that has long gone ignored.
Release Date
January 25, 2025
Runtime
96 Minutes
Director
David Osit
Pros & Cons
The interviews with Mark de Rond help to ground the film and allow it to ruminate on its ideas.
The film makes great use of raw footage and candid interviews.
Osit is not trying to offer definitive answers, but show sensitivity towards a topic that rarely gets it.
Image Via Rosewater Pictures
Image via NBCUniversal
Custom image by Collider Staff
Image by Jovelle Tamayo via Sundance Institute
English (US) ·