Critic Reviews

It’s too soon to know for sure, but this may end up being ranked as one of the best nonfiction films of the year.

It may seem like bias runs rampant, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, as Osit tries to answer his questions while looking behind the scenes in a manner that could if nothing else, showcase the obvious spin of mass media. In looking back at “To Catch a Predator,” Osit takes a look at much, much more.

Osit’s brilliant, subtly needling film leaves us unnerved and alert, but not certain of our convictions — an outcome, perhaps, that more true-crime programming should pursue.

As David Osit’s probing, troubling documentary Predators demonstrates, the sociological implications of the show were (and are) anything but simple, beginning with what the series’ popularity suggests about the viewers who watched it.

Apart from anything else, Predators is a clinic in documentary ethics, but Osit’s intellect doesn’t mute his pain, sensitivity and outrage. It’s a film for the heart and the head.

Initially teasing a condemnation, only to come away with something less certain and more fascinating, it straddles various lines, and perspectives, with impressive confidence.

Split into three parts that reflect an infinite pattern of crime, punishment, and cultural recidivism, Predators fixates on our shared complicity in continuing that cycle with every click.

In forcing a viewer’s roiling, complex feelings inward, Predators is also asking audiences to sit with cruelty, and ponder how contributive, even in a small way, they might have been—as well as just how deep their own personal reservoir of compassion might be.

Where Predators becomes fascinating as a documentary is not in its rise-and-fall accounting of the titular series, however, but in the way it examines the evolution of empathy or vindictiveness in those who have been touched by abuse and tragedy.

It’s not only counterprogramming to the same formulaic true crime series that streaming platforms continue to churn out, but it’s also in direct dialog with these shows and the audience's unrelenting obsession with them.