Predators
(2025 | USA | David Osit | 96 minutes)

In his surprisingly reflective documentary, David Osit revisits Chris Hansen’s salacious Dateline sting operation To Catch a Predator.

Like a prank show for sex pests, each episode found a sex predator, lured to a house full of cameras by young actor who’d spent months portraying a vulnerable underage kid through through calls and instant messages. When the guy would show up, he’d meet the actor, only to have their lurid “date” crashed by reporter Chris Hansen and a camera crew. After a brief interview, they’d reliably be tackled by cooperating law enforcement waiting outside the house.

Although the show ran only for a few years in the early-2000s, it had an outsized impact on shaping public perception of the dangers of then-emerging online spaces. Osit interrogates the way the show’s influence has extended beyond the handful of years that the strange fusion of entertainment and exposure of online child sex criminals played in primetime.

He brings uncomfortable empathy and uncommon curiosity to considering the show’s goals, its legion of online imitators, and the viewing audience’s insatiable appetite for this type of programming. In doing so, we’re asked to confront the queasy mix of news programming with law enforcement, the impact of the show on the people who produced it (especially the “decoys” used to lure in these men), and the genre’s appeal to righteousness over any attempt at understanding.

Predators played as an official selection of the US Documentary Competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It has additional screenings in Park City and Salt Lake City throughout the festival and is also available online for the public (January 30–February 2)