SCREEN | Catching the Real 'Predators' x DOXA 2025

"I see To Catch a Predator as trying to make a public service entertaining."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Director David Osit, a survivor of child sexual abuse by and adult himself, investigates the lasting impact of the hit 2004 Dateline NBC news magazine program To Catch a Predator, famously hosted by journalist Chris Hansen. His documentary, aptly named Predators, revisits the television phenomenon that turned true crime into popular entertainment as it lured otherwise mild-mannered potential sex offenders with no previous criminal records into a trap where they were confronted and arrested on camera.

Unfortunately, the ethically dubious show's massive success spawned many imitators and vigilantes after its cancellation in 2007, when a Texas assistant district attorney shot himself to death before being arrested. Subsequently, legal issues prosecuting the predators became widespread. Its imitators often seek retribution while transforming the greater cultural touchstone into a moral persecution of media spectacle.

How Osit explores our obsession with this kind of televised reality prosecution of sometimes clearly unwell and sympathetic men before they commit any real crime under the supposed anonymity of the internet makes for a fascinating reflection back on us as the captivated audience. Furthermore, the experience of the "decoys," young adults who looked like teens used to trick these assailants, offers another endlessly interesting wrinkle in the program's troubling production in tandem with local law enforcement and their own precarious motives.

Predators entraps a provocative look at the ethics of televised justice against these would-be perpetrators and their unintended lasting repercussions. How it dissects To Catch a Predator's dark legacy and role in reality television as news entertainment is exhaustive, upsetting, complicated, and infuriating. Our perverse sense of satisfaction watching these problematic sting operations says just as much about us as it does the "real" child predators.

Predators screened at the 2025 DOXA Documentary Film Festival as part of the Highlights program at the VIFF Centre.


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