Predators Review

As a younger millennial growing up in the shadow of the “online predator,” it is difficult to overstate the cultural impact NBC Dateline’s To Catch a Predator had on the United States in the early aughts. In Predators, director David Osit chronicles the history and continued influence of To Catch a Predator (TCAP), which aired from 2004–2007. In TCAP, Hansen and his team have adult decoys pose as minors to seek adult men who solicit minors online for sex, always ending with those men showing up in person only to be confronted by Hansen and then summarily arrested by local law enforcement. What begins as a seemingly straightforward documentary about a popular show and its known controversies evolves into a complex examination of the show’s cultural affect, bound inextricably with Osit’s personal experiences. 

Predators brings together a blend of archival footage—including raw footage of the show that Osit originally discovered on Reddit—with interviews from a wide range of subjects. Osit sits down with actors who played decoy children on the show; former law enforcement and local government officials involved in the show’s production; current-day Hansen copycats making their own DIY “predator-catcher” series; and the crown jewel, Hansen himself. The documentary is structured into three sections, beginning with the history of TCAP and ending with Hansen’s current project, Takedown with Chris Hansen (2022-), which is, in essence, TCAP again, only this time on Hansen’s own true crime streaming service, TruBlu. 

The anchor throughout is Mark de Rond, Professor of Organizational Ethnography at the University of Cambridge, who reviews footage and discusses the show with Osit throughout the film, providing a (at least at first) detached, analytical point of view. Bringing in “experts,” typically law enforcement or academics in fields connected to criminal justice, is a go-to trope of the true crime genre, as these figures in theory offer an objective analysis of a particular crime or criminal in contrast to the subjective emotions of those directly affected by the crime. Putting aside my personal critiques of ethnography as a discipline, here de Rond’s presence is notable because he is not located in the field of criminal justice. His presence foregrounds Osit’s critique of true crime; in the film’s press notes, Osit opens with the statement “I don’t like true crime documentaries that much.” His frustration, he contends, is that true crime presents the “illusion” that once watched, “the crime will be solved and we’ll get all the answers.” Osit’s preoccupation with true crime’s “answers” is echoed by Rond, whose investment is in understanding why people do what they do. 

Rond stands in as the documentary’s narrator for Osit, who over the course of the film emerges from behind the camera as his personal experiences become the narrative stakes for the documentary. Osit’s increasing presence puts pressure on the assumption that documentary—especially true crime documentary—is an objective framing of actual events. In performing this sleight of hand, Osit pulls our attention to the constructed nature of To Catch a Predator itself, contrasting the unedited footage against the show’s own framing of the events it describes. 

I was struck by an early moment in the documentary, the moment I realized Osit was really doing something different in his engagement with the culture TCAP is part of and partly responsible for creating. He interviews former Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo, who tells Osit his cooperation with NBC Dateline allowed the show to “fill in” the gaps cops couldn’t—to root out and incarcerate these potential predators. When Osit asks how he would respond to criticism of the show, Stumbo becomes defensive, dismissing any potential humanity the shows’ predators may have. After all, a predator is a monster, guilty of the worst possible crime we can conceive of; unworthy of and simultaneously devoid of humanity. 

Then Osit shows him raw footage of one of the captured predators being processed at the station. We, with Stumbo, watch the man realize what’s happening to him, his guilt and shame recorded. The camera lingers on Stumbo’s face; after the clip ends, he says, “this is not typical of a criminal interrogation,” suggesting that perhaps this one man happened to be an exception to his stance that all “predators” are irredeemable criminals. There is a crack that appears in Stumbo’s previous statements. It’s a moment of doubt introduced by the documentary: a shift in meaning. Maybe the neat, narrative closure of a TCAP episode does not provide answers; maybe these predators cannot be reduced to, as Stumbo puts it, “hardened criminals,” empty of all interiority as they’re presented through TCAP’s (and ultimately Hansen’s) point of view.  

This is a move Osit repeats throughout the documentary, sharing footage with his interview subjects and capturing their reactions in real time, so that as we see the footage so too do we see how the footage, what is shared and what is left on the cutting room floor, tells a kind of narrative about To Catch a Predator and the people To Catch a Predator ultimately catches in their camera lens. 

It is difficult work to tackle the concept of the predator. The predator is not a real person, but an idea, a cultural object: a way to displace the material conditions that create sexual abuse, including child sexual abuse, out of sight and out of mind. It is easier to live in a world where inhuman strangers are responsible for all or most interpersonal violence, where there can be no answer to why someone would do this, so we do not need to ask. It is easier still to justify sending those strangers away forever, to use them as objects of entertainment in the name of making the world safe. It is easier than confronting the reality that 93% of child sexual abuse victims know their abuser personally. It is easier to live with an incorrect certainty than have to contend with uncertainty, to be willing to ask why of the darkest, hardest moments we’re confronted with. 

In Predators Osit seeks to make meaning out of his experiences by grappling with a show responsible for making meaning by crafting a particular narrative of child sexual abuse that’s still mainstreamed to this day. At times, I felt frustrated by the spectre of the predator that haunts Predator. We dance around the predator, what makes someone a predator, but never quite confront it head on. At the same time, the documentary’s success is in refusing, in turn, to make its own meaning out of what Osit’s camera documents, in sharp contrast to NBC (and eventually TrueBlu)’s cameras. It leaves its biggest questions unsettled. And ultimately, I do respect that. You may come away with some new information about To Catch a Predator, but you certainly won’t leave with firm understanding. This is, in fact, Predators’ gift: a willingness to challenge our preconceptions without dictating what should replace them, culminating in a quietly powerful ending that asks us to recontextualize our own viewing experience.

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