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“Why don’t you have a seat over here.”
It’s perverse that a TV news program about child predators quickly developed its own catchphrase, as if silver-throated host Chris Hansen were just another incarnation of Steve Urkel, but such was the addictive mix of harrowing docudrama and lizard brain entertainment that defined the “Dateline NBC” spinoff “To Catch a Predator.”
On the air from 2004 to 2007, the show followed a simple formula: Members of a volunteer organization known as “Perverted-Justice” would find men online and lure them to a house with the explicit promise of having sex with a minor. When the marks arrived, they would be greeted by a young-looking decoy — only for Hansen to step out of the shadows a moment later, along with a camera crew ready to broadcast their shame to the world. After sputtering apologies and pleading for mercy while Hansen read aloud from the transcripts of their online chat logs, the predators were told they were “free to go.” By the later seasons of the show, some of these unsuspecting guest stars must have known that a mob of local police officers was waiting to tackle them the moment they stepped outside.
Backstopped by the sheer horror of the crimes that its subjects intended to commit against children, “To Catch a Predator” effectively turned an unspeakable act into the stuff of a public spectacle. It didn’t seem to matter that the show made the vast majority of these cases impossible to prosecute, or that filming it threatened to confuse the boundaries between entertainment media and law enforcement even more than “Cops” already had; people reveled in the sheer reality and schadenfreude of watching a bad guy’s life come to an end before their eyes, and few would argue that the predators ensnared by Hansen’s trap deserved a much different fate. In part, that’s because these men intended to do such terrible things. And in part, that’s because “pedophile” is a word that has the power to make even the suggestion of nuance seem unforgivably immoral (which helps to explain its prominent use as a political weapon).
A raw and riveting documentary that skeptically re-examines the program’s appeal, legacy, and ethicality, David Osit’s “Predators” certainly doesn’t make the case that Hansen’s marks were innocent bystanders who were entrapped against their will. On the contrary, the film opens with the skin-crawling audio of a phone call between a 37-year-old predator and one of the “13-year-old” decoys from Perverted-Justice, and that alone is enough to establish the incontrovertible awfulness of what was at stake with these sting operations.
And yet, as both a filmmaker whose work (“Mayor,” “Thank You for Playing”) has always been compelled by moral inquiry, as well as a person for whom “To Catch a Predator” triggered a swirl of conflicting emotions, Osit is haunted by his enjoyment of a show that was ultimately less interested in crime than punishment. Hansen’s theatrics helped paved the way for a media landscape driven by humiliation rituals, and “Predators” leverages the success of that NBC program — along with the tragedy of how it ended, and the YouTube vigilantes who’ve iterated on its format with even less oversight than Hansen ever had — into a probing investigation of its own.
The film’s ultimate conclusion is clear from the start: “To Catch a Predator” was an invitation to see the world in black-and-white, a prospect which has only become more enticing in light of America’s subsequent chaos. It was an invitation to tar and feather people so plainly “evil” that everyone watching along at home couldn’t help but to feel “good” by comparison. And though it sold itself as an invitation to make sense of an inexplicable wrong, the show’s power was rooted in the permission it gave us to ignore why such heinous violations continue to happen.
To paraphrase the Scandinavian ethnographer who Osit interviews throughout the film: Chris Hansen might ask his targets to “help me understand” why they prey on children, but the appeal of shows like “To Catch a Predator” hinges on not understanding their subjects. “If you show these men as human beings,” the interviewee says, “the show kind of breaks down.” Still active today, Hansen has now been staging these sting operations for more than 20 years, and yet he’s no closer to knowing why some men can’t stop themselves from falling into his traps.
That telling admission doesn’t emerge until the film’s third act, in which Hansen agrees to a sit-down interview that frames the former “To Catch a Predator” host as if he were one of the show’s unsuspecting marks. First, Osit catches up with some of Hansen’s ex-collaborators, whose unresolved feelings about the experience complicate the show’s reputation as a moral crusade. One of the decoys Osit interviews smiles at the camera as she fondly reminisces about her days as an actress, but her discomfort grows as she’s made to answer questions she’s never dared to ask herself. Another is more clearly traumatized by his involvement in the show, particularly because he was cast in the episode that ended with a man killing himself as the camera crew made its way into his house. One law enforcement officer refers to his participation as “a stain on my soul.”
“Predators” makes sure to hear from a few participants who are proud of their work on the program (or other programs like it), most notably a Kentucky DA who feels like he came straight from “The Dukes of Hazzard,” and insists that his job was only to capture predators, not to rehabilitate them. Most of these people serve to reinforce the dehumanization at work, none more so than the police officer who responded to the aforementioned suicide, and — in footage from the day — can be seen laughing about the dead before his body has even been removed from the house.
Soliciting empathy for child predators would be a high-wire act for any documentary filmmaker, but Osit is less interested in putting Hansen’s targets on trial than he is in interrogating our desire to act as judge, jury, and executioner. (I’m not sure if that explains why he doesn’t interview any members of Perverted-Justice, or if it makes their absence seem all the more glaring.) Split into three parts that reflect an infinite pattern of crime, punishment, and cultural recidivism, “Predators” fixates on our shared complicity in continuing that cycle with every click.
The middle section of the film introduces us to “Skeet Hansen,” among the highest-profile of the many Chris Hansen imitators who’ve found success on YouTube, and it’s immediately clear that the guy isn’t doing any favors to his namesake. Bumbling and unrehearsed where the OG Hansen was smoother than a used car salesman, the shoddiness of Skeet’s operation only serves to underscore how transparently “To Catch a Predator” exploited the worst crimes imaginable for cheap entertainment.
And Skeet at least has the decency to call the cops on his targets when he’s done with them — so many of the amateur predators you can find online today prefer to assault their targets in public and leave them for dead as the content uploads to Twitter and TikTok. Damning as Skeet’s appearance might be, Osit convincingly argues that anyone who watches his videos is just as complicit in continuing the cycle.
To that point, the most illuminating part of the film’s middle chapter is the light it shines on the victims of childhood sexual abuse, and how some of them — perhaps more than anyone else — might play an active role in perpetuating the false binary between good and evil. Skeet’s most enthusiastic collaborator is revealed to be a survivor, and the nonchalant testimony she gives here articulates why people like her might be particularly eager to see child predators get strung up in a virtual town square: It’s not only out of revenge, but also because such the cause-and-effect of crime and punishment allows her to make sense of a trauma that must be all the more agonizing to endure without an explanation.
That’s at least the way Osit sees it. The director has asked critics to discuss the third act of his film with discretion, but it’s safe to say that “Predators” stems from a personal need for catharsis. Like the show it puts under the microscope, Osit’s documentary mines “content” from abhorrent criminality, but it does so to radically different ends. Osit is no more qualified to — or interested in — “solve” the epidemic of child predators than Chris Hansen has ever been, but he’s clearly troubled by the fact that Hansen and his imitators depend on impeding our ability to meaningfully address this crisis. If anything, their work exists to promote it, and to inflate the public’s impression of how widespread the crisis really is.
Did “To Catch a Predator” save a small number of children from being abused? Possibly. Probably, even. And even one would be reason enough to celebrate it for that. But, like so much of the media that has been made and consumed in the 21st century, the show did so because of its own self-insistent desire to exist, and its success was dependent upon simplifying a world that continues to grow more complicated by the day; upon eroding nuance, problematizing sensitivity, and mulching genuine concern into unrepentant bloodlust.
As “Predator” makes clear in a heartbreaking aside about a newly 18-year-old high school student whose life was ruined after Hansen learned that he was dating a younger classmate (the age gap between them legal in several other states), there are very real consequences to presenting dehumanization as a righteous act of public justice. “To Catch a Predator” might seem like the wrong lens through which to make that case, as few people invite less sympathy than the men who found their way into Hansen’s web. But that is exactly what makes Osit’s film such a powerful indictment of the lens through which we’ve since been conditioned to see everything else as well.
Grade: B+
“Predators” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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