This gripping Sundance documentary re-examines the rise and fall of mid-00s hidden camera show To Catch a Predator in a damning investigation into the murky ethics of true crime entertainment.
A powerful indictment of the lens through which we’ve since been conditioned to see everything.
Predators 2025
On air from 2004 until 2007, To Catch a Predator was news magazine show Dateline’s most popular recurring segment. In a typical episode, a “decoy” – an actor posing as a minor, usually aged between 12 and 15 – would lure adult men in chat rooms to a sting house after confirming their intent to have sex, only to be met by host Chris Hansen, who would emerge from another room with a camera crew, ambushing the would-be perpetrator and exposing their shame to the world as spectacle.
Though it was never broadcast in this part of the world, the show’s impact spread far and wide thanks to the formative meme culture of the times. Across its three year run it courted controversy, particularly around potential violation of entrapment laws once the production began collaborating with law enforcement. In Predators, director David Osit (Mayor NZIFF 2020) re-examines the series, investigating the audience hunger for punishment and public shaming that continues to power the true crime media landscape today.
A riveting work of documentary that interrogates what justice really looks like. — Amanda Jane Robinson