Rating: TV-MA | Runtime: 96 minutes
Release Date: September 19th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: MTV Documentary Films
Director(s): David Osit

Understanding is not a goal of the show.

This is a fascinating look at the motivations behind turning real life into entertainment and the inherent exploitation a lack of nuance guarantees to inevitably help audiences lose their ability to tell the difference. It coming from a survivor who sought out “To Catch a Predator” to understand why his abuser did what they did only to realize how dangerous and gross the show proved ensures his psychological read on the format lands.

Does David Osit get us closer to finding that why? No. But he does implore the general populace to confront the why behind the popularity of copaganda shows and how law enforcement uses them to further expand their power and control by erasing empathy and turning the grayness of morality and humanity into a binary of one-dimensional good versus evil. Now give me the documentary connecting the dots from Chris Hansen to ICE kidnapping immigrants from their law-abiding court appointments.

Predators doesn’t do that despite it often seeming like Osit wants to go there. It instead pulls the curtain on the artifice and shows the unforgivable cost to what Hansen did and how the police (and some courts) allowed him to do it. This subject is much bigger than ninety minutes allows, though, so the film plays like more of a table-turned “gotcha” moment of its own. It exposes the disingenuous nature of Hansen’s pursuit for justice by forcing him to answer his own question: Why did you do this? It paid well and made him feel like a hero.

Hansen unironically calls his copycats “vigilantes” as a pejorative, but you know he has a “Batman” bracelet at home just like the one worn by Skeet’s fake cop buddy.

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Chris Hansen and David Osit in PREDATORS.