Director David Osit’s scathing and empathetic investigation of the controversial show To Catch a Predator, looking at its history, its rise, and its legacy. This often bizarre and sanctimonious television show was ostensibly designed to entrap child predators, but the result was often exploitative, and culminated in tragedy.

The show, a spin-off of Dateline NBC, with host Chris Hansen, would involve waiting for men to arrive at a suburban home where the predators thought a young person would be waiting. Camera crews and police would descend and in the chaos an episode would emerge. Predators explores the media world spawned from the show and examines what it says about those who create it, and those who watch. Director David Osit asks uncomfortable questions about the ethics of a show of this kind, and wonders aloud how effective it could possibly be… and does the same for the movie he himself is making.