If you thought COPS blurred the line between entertainment and law enforcement, that’s nothing compared to what the Dateline NBC spinoff To Catch a Predator did. The undisputed king of sensationalistic ambush TV, the series became part of the national lexicon, and host Chris Hansen a celebrity for the casual way he would greet newly-entrapped child predators: “Why don’t you have a seat over here?”, “What were you thinking?” “What was the thought process?”
To Catch a Predator‘s dubious legacy gets examined in the new doc, Predators, which premiered earlier this year at Sundance, where I first reviewed it. The film is by David Osit and MTV Documentary Films, and will hit theaters on September 19th. The most compelling aspect of the film is catching up with Hansen, who feels no shame about the damage he and the show might’ve done.
Here’s the synopsis: A cultural sensation from its inception in the early 2000s, “Dateline NBC”’s candid-camera investigative series “To Catch a Predator” ensnared sex offenders and lured them to a film set, where they would be interviewed and arrested while cameras rolled. The show was a hit and transformed its host, Chris Hansen, into a moral crusader and TV star, while spawning a worldwide industry of imitators and vigilantes. But why did we watch so voraciously — and why do we continue to devour its web-based, clickbait-driven offshoots?
Looking back on the show and the countless franchises it spawned, filmmaker David Osit turns his camera on journalists, actors, law enforcers, academics, and ultimately himself, to trace America’s obsession with watching people at their lowest. “Predators” is a chilling, edge-of-your-seat film that delves into the murk of human nature to observe hunter, predator, subject, and spectator alike, all ensnared in a complicated web of entertainment as far as the eye can see.
