Predators lost credibility with me well before its stunt ending (which I won’t spoil here). Director David Osit revisits the enormously popular and influential “To Catch a Predator” segments that ran on Dateline NBC from 2004-2007, in which host Chris Hansen collaborated with law enforcement to set up on-camera sting operations targeting potential child predators. Osit’s Predators consists of contemporary interviews with the “decoys” who played underage girls and boys on the show, as well as those in the justice system who participated, all of whom express some sort of regret over the series and question its methods. Much of this reevaluation had already been done in a 2007 20/20 investigation, which Predators acknowledges. Osit adds a new wrinkle by exploring the vigilante copycats that have popped up in the wake of the Dateline segments, even following an eager YouTuber who stages his own hacky version. This was where Predators lost me. In the wake of one “sting” in a hotel room, the potential offender expresses suicidal thoughts, an outcome for which the YouTuber is clearly not prepared. In that moment, a Predators crew member asks the distraught suspect to sign a release form—precisely the sort of callous, emotional profiteering in which “To Catch a Predator” originally trafficked. Later, Osit offers a personal revelation that some might say justifies his project, in that it suggests Predators is an exercise in meta introspection on Osit’s part. Yet this quality gets lost in the documentary’s climax: a present-day interview with Hansen that employs a too-clever, gotcha gambit. Predators may have been therapeutic for Osit, but for the rest of us it counts as third-degree, self-righteous voyeurism. (For more gracious, rehabilitative documentaries on similar subject matter, I’d recommend Procession and, especially, Pervert Park.)
(1/8/2025)
