It wouldn’t be farfetched to say that society likes seeing people doing bad things get their comeuppance. If the bad guys are as abundant as we think, we need something tangible to hold on to to give us some comfort so that we can sleep easily at night. There wasn’t a docudrama more fitting for this than the Dateline NBC spinoff “To Catch a Predator.” “Well, you’re free to go” acted as the death kneel for men who aspired to do the unthinkable and prey on who they thought were underaged children.
NBC, journalist/host Chris Hansen, and the internet watchdog group Perverted Justice were formidable against the jarring conveyor belt of potential offenders of all ages from 2004-2007. Collectively, we cheered, but documentarian David Osit’s “Predators” walks within the grey areas of the show about retaliation, ethical consumption and participation, and what our end goal is, tackling complex topics in society (and true crime as a whole). It doesn’t make for an easy watch because there isn’t exactly a neat answer in this three-part narrative. Despite that, it makes for a compelling deep dive into the show’s impact and those who follow in its’ footsteps out of admiration of the culture it brought on.

Predators / Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival
Ethnographer Mark de Rond almost serves as a real-time guide as “Predators” dive into the ins and outs of the prior NBC show. The documentary has him watching clips of “To Catch A Predator” through a projector and parsing their overall impact in the present day. As the documentary continues, he realizes that perhaps the network framed the show from a slanted perspective. Instead, the show was focused on being the catch-all blunt deterrent, reading the explicit chats, Hansen saying the usual catchphrases, and these men being forcibly taken to jail. Never mind the wrinkle where most of these cases may have potential legal issues over their heads. It begs whether we have to wonder if a show of this legacy is there to feed the wolves of pseudo-entertainment rather than getting to the root of the program.
While Chris Hansen has been involved in sting operations for over two decades, he became a rock-n-roll pop culture icon – numerous late-night television appearances and even a Simpsons guest star spot. Was that the end goal? Osit shines the light towards Hansen, but also all facets of production and those involved. “Predators” interviews former decoys who likened their roles to being actors (even if they were subjugating themselves in a potentially volatile situation).
Once they recall their experiences, there are mentions of power and the fact that people couldn’t discern between fantasy and reality. All these recollections came down to a unifier of this line of work: taxing mentality and physical. Osit also interviews different sides of law enforcement. A particular Kentucky DA, Greg Stumbo, made it clear rehabilitation wasn’t something he was interested in. On the flip side, former Collin County District Attorney John Roach was highly critical of the show’s operational tactics – even making light that officers were possibly taking direction from producers themselves.
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It all meets at a violate crescendo where a district attorney committed suicide during an attempted sting operation at their household in 2006. There’s very little shellshock concerning the behind-the-scenes footage shown that day. If anything, the incident was considered another potential segment of the show – another revelation that will still be present to the audience upon viewing. A legacy begets copycats, and Osit’s documentary peers into the world of the wild wild west of spiritual streaming successors. The caveat is they throw ethics into the wild. Skeet Hansen, a Chris Hansen persona, tries to bring the same temperament, but only provides Osit’s insights regarding the optics of how people see the Dateline show. The goal for those coming after Hansen’s heyday is not to make a safer world, but to profit off these fears for entertainment’s sake.
The legacy of “To Catch A Predator” is two-fold. There’s no question it brought attention (and possibly some resolutions) to make society aware of how potential offenders operate. In that sense, perhaps the method of the show worked. Weekly, viewers had a physical manifestation in which to draw their ire. The other theme that Osit gets at is asking if we are closer to solving the overall problem or if that is something we even want to think about. Are victims that much closer to understanding the psychology of someone engaging in an act of depravity, and are the potential offenders beyond reproach to being reformed? After twenty years, it’s not clear Chris Hansen has an answer. With “Predators,” Osit pursues defining a personal truth but intelligently asks the audience to look within. Do we want to approach this problem at the beginning so that shows like “To Catch A Predator” become less prevalent, or do we only know how to see this issue through the peripherals of televised vengeance? Are we J. Robert Oppenheimer at the end of the 2023 film wondering if the tool we created to solve a problem only to exacerbate it further? The answers will require hard reflection.
“Predators” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.