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'Predators' Review: A Damning Doc on the Legacy of To Catch a Predator

Sundance: David Osit's harrowing documentary re-examines the appeal of the show that precipitated a media landscape built around social humiliation.

After sputtering apologies and pleading for mercy while Hansen read aloud from the transcripts of their online chat logs, the predators were told they were “free to go.” By the later seasons of the show, some of these unsuspecting guest stars must have known that a mob of local police officers was waiting to tackle them the moment they stepped outside. It didn’t seem to matter that the show made the vast majority of these cases impossible to prosecute, or that filming it threatened to confuse the boundaries between entertainment media and law enforcement even more than “Cops” already had; people reveled in the sheer reality and schadenfreude of watching a bad guy’s life come to an end before their eyes, and few would argue that the predators ensnared by Hansen’s trap deserved a much different fate. As “Predator” makes clear in a heartbreaking aside about a newly 18-year-old high school student whose life was ruined after Hansen learned that he was dating a younger classmate (the age gap between them legal in several other states), there are very real consequences to presenting dehumanization as a righteous act of public justice.

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