Predators Asks If To Catch a Predator Nurtured the Sadist in All of Us
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a spectator in the ancient Roman Coliseum. Soldiers march a man out in chains, and enumerate his supposed crimes. Perhaps they accuse the man of theft, or rape, or murder. You know very little about the true circumstances of how he ended up here today, but the promise of his guilt is meant to provide justification of what comes next: The man being torn apart by hungry lions, or run through by gladiators, while the assembled crowd of 50,000 cheers wildly, exulting in the bloodshed. Would it be acceptable to long for such a lurid display of violence under any other circumstances? Not really, but not to worry–as long as the target is a criminal, we’re allowed to indulge our own sociopathic tendencies from a platform of moral superiority. Give people a shield of righteousness to hide behind, and they’ll giddily embrace state-sanctioned barbarism, while denying that their own worst impulses exist. That’s the reality at the heart of documentarian David Osit’s new film Predators, which tackles the disturbing legacy of To Catch a Predator, questioning whether the show–and its modern internet offspring–have provided more value or trauma over the course of the last two decades.
If you were watching TV, or generally aware of popular culture in any sense in the late 2000s, then you no doubt will remember some kernel of To Catch a Predator, which initially aired on NBC from 2004-2007. Carrying on the baton of the likes of Cops in terms of its intent to turn law enforcement operations into televised entertainment, To Catch a Predator was hosted by Dateline NBC reporter Chris Hansen, and would generally always unfold in the same manner: A “predator” seeking online chat or sexual rendezvous with a decoy posing as an underage child would either suggest or be cajoled into meeting up with the person they thought was a child, only to find Hansen waiting for them in the home. The predator–almost always male–would then be invited (or again cajoled) to sit down for an interview and be shamed by Hansen, frequently pleading for mercy or leniency, before they were then arrested by police and typically charged with solicitation of a minor. Soon after its premiere, the show became a cultural sensation of the mid-2000s, inspiring endless reference and parody on the likes of South Park.
Purely as a law enforcement tool, the style pioneered by To Catch a Predator could be described as mixed in its effectiveness–it did result in convictions in some of its sting operations against significant numbers of pedophiles, but in other instances its lax application of the law resulted in dozens of the “caught” predators having their charges dropped by local law enforcement, due to failures such as not making those men aware of their basic rights, or because they failed to adequately collect and share pertinent evidence. Increasingly, people began to ask: What is most important to the program? Aiding law enforcement in catching criminals, or making the “catches” entertaining to a home audience hungry for humiliation? When a decoy convinces a predator that they should strip naked before entering the home, does that nude pedophile meeting Chris Hansen serve any purpose related to “justice”? Or is it just material for the home audience to mock?
As Osit’s Predators illustrates, the unifying principle of To Catch a Predator was essentially that any action it took would always be justified, given that it was carried out in the name of “saving children,” a sentiment that no person could reasonably be against. As a defense against turning those operations into entertainment, the show seemed to posit that by publicizing their enforcement operations, potential predators might see the program and thus be dissuaded from engaging in these behaviors themselves, thereby protecting more minors. But public sentiment became much more complicated toward the series after a botched sting in 2007, in which a man committed suicide after the To Catch a Predator crew decided to travel to his home, ultimately resulting in a $105 million wrongful death lawsuit that was eventually settled out of court. Hansen, the figurehead of this style of programming, has subsequently moved on to launching his own true crime network TruBlue, which still produces more To Catch a Predator-style sting operations, citing public demand for the programming.
Where Predators becomes fascinating as a documentary is not in its rise-and-fall accounting of the titular series, however, but in the way it examines the evolution of empathy or vindictiveness in those who have been touched by abuse and tragedy. Osit is himself a survivor of abuse, one who has come to feel that To Catch a Predator primarily fostered not empathy for the survivors and victims, but mostly bloodlust on the part of the audience, hungry to see “justice” served even if it was extrajudicial in nature, ineffective, or totally devoid of context. It should go without saying that this is an extremely thorny topic to tackle, as it is difficult to tell any survivor how they should feel. The former decoys who are interviewed, for instance, have diverged in significantly different ways in how they feel about these types of programs, as some now feel guilty for their role in potentially entrapping individuals who may never have actually committed a crime unless they were coerced into doing so. At the same time, you can’t deny one of the decoys–another child sexual assault survivor–who with honesty admits that she relishes in the vengeance that her role offers. “It feels good to squash the bug,” she says, actively resisting any stirring of empathy.
Today, these issues have arguably become even more relevant than they were in the late 2000s, because an entire generation of online content creators have stepped into the power vacuum left by To Catch a Predator, and many of them are far more shameless than Hansen ever was about either monetizing their activity or carrying out pure vigilante actions, seemingly to sate their own desires to hurt other people. Some hosts such as Skeeter Jean, aka “Skeet Hansen,” emulate Hansen in an even sloppier DIY fashion, telling the predators they lure into sting operations nonsense such as “I’m with the predatorial investigation unit; we have the police on standby.” Pressed on how he has monetized his operation, built around predator entertainment, he offers the following rationale: “There’s never been a detective that solved a murder that didn’t get paid for it.”
Even more concerning, though, is the rise in vigilante-adjacent action in internet communities, many of whom have figured out that they can essentially get away with ambushing and beating up people (and then monetizing the videos) at will, as long as said people are men they’re accusing of pedophilia, dropping any pretense of involving law enforcement or seeking legal justice. In an era when politicians have increasingly anchored themselves to QAnon-style conspiracy theories and baselessly alleged vast conspiracies related to “elite” pedophile networks operating among us, these “content creators” have stepped in to slake the thirst for blood of the American right wing in particular, viewers who are less interested in seeking justice through the law and instead just want to see people get hurt in a way they can feel righteous about witnessing, while chanting “save the children”. In other words, it’s the Roman Coliseum all over again. The content creators get to feed their psychopathic desires, and then get rewarded for doing so, having found a loophole in the system where you can not only get away with violence, but be praised for it. Osit as filmmaker is clearly horrified by these instances, as well he should be.
Predators culminates in Osit finally stepping out from behind to in front of the camera in order to confront none other than Hansen, a man who has had decades in order to workshop a suite of defensive mechanisms against various allegations of wrongdoing. “What I do is for a greater purpose,” Hansen stresses, needing to draw as firm a line as he possibly can between himself and the amateur copycats clearly inspired by him. Looking at him, it becomes clear that Hansen can see the damage he’s been party to, but he manages to hold it apart from himself. There are times he looks wounded; haunted, but then the defensiveness springs back as Osit probes him on specific cases: In one case, Hansen’s TruBlue including an exposé of an 18-year-old high school senior who attempted to meet what he thought was a 15-year-old classmate for sex. Despite the fact that the age difference between the two is not illegal in all states, Hansen doubles down on the idea that the 18-year-old is just as guilty, culpable and deserving of punishment as any of the other predators he has exposed. Osit, meanwhile, includes interviews with the mother of the anonymous 18-year-old, while her unnamed son can be heard, distantly, sobbing in another part of the home. “I couldn’t believe that Chris Hansen would be willing to stoop so low for his show,” the mother says. “I wish Chris could feel 1% of our pain, even though it fixes nothing.”
Predators, then, asks us to interrogate what we’re getting out of supposed pursuits of justice. The vulnerable, of course, must be protected. But perhaps the route to doing so should be out of the hands of those clearly seeking their own sick enjoyment, profit or entertainment. If it gives you a giddy thrill to watch Chris Hansen interrogate an 18-year-old, perhaps you should next ask yourself what that says about you.
Director: Davis Osit
Release date: Sept. 19, 2025
Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film writing.
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