Predators: Justice By Media

The police are legally bound by rules of conduct and evidence collection. The media is not. This can be an issue, especially when they join forces. This happened famously (and perhaps sometimes notoriously) on NBC’s Dateline sub-program, To Catch a Predator. They caught enough predators to fill a small army, several each week, and spawned another army of copycats, but filmmaker David Osit’s examination of the show’s legacy comes to decidedly mixed conclusions in the documentary Predators, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

Often parodied, To Catch a Predator captured the intersection of true crime and reality TV, employing baby-faced adult actors as “decoys” to bust would-be sexual predators trying to move beyond the grooming stage. It was creepy, but compelling. It also made host and interviewer/cross examiner Chris Hansen a national star. However, its conviction rate was much lower than fans assumed.

In almost all cases, it is hard to feel sympathy for the targets of Hansen’s stings. However, a handful of marginal cases clearly trouble Osit, for reasons which he cogently explains. The most obvious case was the suicide that maybe partially led to the end of the show’s run on NBC. It also raises issues of entrapment, because the target was clearly reluctant to come meet the decoy, so Hansen brought the show’s camera to the suspect’s house, where he fatally shot himself. Osit incorporates a good deal of raw footage shot outside the predator’s house, much of which casts more shade than sunlight on Hansen. (In retrospect, perhaps Hansen and company should have encouraged that reluctance, rather than charging in for a confrontation.)

However, the film’s most troubling incident came after NBC cancelled the Dateline subsidiary series. Having moved to TruBlu (which is practically Hansen’s own dedicated streaming service), his successor series launched a sting targeting an 18-year-old supposedly meeting a 15-year-old, which raises a whole host of issues, including the “three-year exemption” many states observe, to avoid criminalizing freshmen-senior high school relationships.

Osit somehow secured footage of TruBlu co-founder Shawn Rech questioning the wisdom of that “takedown,” but Hansen insists on proceeding. The resulting webisode ruined the 18-year-old’s life, as his tearful mother explains at length. Consequently, Osit’s film is far from the triumphant career Hansen maybe anticipated.

While Hansen speaks for himself, during the climatic extended interview segment, his extensive media arguably works against him, because he seems too unquestioningly assured rather than reflective or philosophical regarding the aforementioned controversies. At times, he seems addicted to his own righteousness.

For obvious reasons, none of the busted predators speak with Osit on-camera (which leaves a void). However, there are some fascinating segments featuring the youthful looking thesps who played the decoys. Again, their feelings are hard to classify with blanket terms. Mark de Rond also offers surprisingly insightful commentary for an academic. However, some of the most challenging analysis comes from Osit, who grudgingly allows himself to be pulled into the film, as an abuse survivor, whose own feelings towards the NBC series grow increasingly complex and contradictory.

Although thoughtful, Predators makes a few missteps, include an overly long profile of one of Hansen’s YouTube imitators, who is not nearly as interesting as he thinks his subscriber numbers suggest. However, Osit ends the film on a brilliantly ironic note. This is a thoughtful and unusually challenging documentary that actually examines its subject from multiple perspectives. Indeed, how novel. Recommended for its analysis of the true crime media, Predators opens tomorrow (9/19) at Film Forum.