One Night In Idaho: The College Murders is a four-part docuseries, directed by Liz Garbus, that details the November 13, 2022 killings of Iowa State students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin in the house they rented near campus. The murders and investigation frightened the entire town of Moscow and the population of Idaho State, especially because the killings seemed so random. The investigation and arrest of Bryan Kohberger didn’t alleviate those fears, because they were replaced by the fact that he didn’t have a personal connection to the victims.
Opening Shot: Shots of Moscow, Idaho, home of Idaho State University. We hear a voice say that Moscow is “One of the safest towns, not only in Idaho, but in the United States.”
The Gist: In the first episode, Garbus and her film crew take their time and give audiences a chance to know the four victims; friends of all four and family of Mogen and Chapin are interviewed. Because, as a disclaimer at the beginning of the episode mentions, law enforcement was under a gag order at the time of filming, Garbus doesn’t have any of them, or any “experts”, being interviewed in that first episode.
The four victims are portrayed as typical Gen Z college students, who embraced the part of college life that was as much about a fun social life and finding lifelong friends as it is about academics. Chapin, who was a triplet who went to Idaho State with his brother and sister, was dating Kernodle, and the entire friend group was very close.
As the friends come to realize that something is very wrong at the house where the victims (and two others who survived the ordeal) lived, they are getting no information from police, even as they see law enforcement going through the house while their friends’ bodies are still inside.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of?: Just this week, Peacock released a documentary called The Idaho Student Murders. There was also a docuseries called The Idaho College Murders. Paramount+ also had a docuseries called #Cybersleuths: The Idaho Murders, which examined the use of genetic genealogy to link Kohberger to the murders.
Our Take: We’re not sure just yet if Kohberger’s recent guilty plea ahead of his trial is helping or hurting both of the Idaho-related documentaries released this week. But it does speak to the risks of putting together a documentary or docuseries about a case that was ongoing as it was being put together. Developments happen so fast that there is a danger of the information in the documentary becoming immediately obsolete, or making the streamer scramble to add a text postscript to the end of the show.
In the case of One Night In Idaho, Garbus’ slow and steady approach helps. We’ve seen her take this approach in her recent docuseries about the Gilgo Beach murders, giving audiences a chance to get to know the victims and those around them before turning her narrative sights onto the killer.
While that makes for a first episode that can be a bit repetitive and frustrating, we at least get a picture of the four victims that goes beyond them just being “generic Middle America college students,” which much of the media coverage over the past two-and-a-half-years has reduced them to. As usual in these cases, once the suspect is caught, that person gets a whole lot more attention than the victims do, and Garbus wants to make sure we know about the people whose lives were seemingly randomly snuffed out — and in grisly fashion — by Kohberger.
The other three parts will discuss the investigation, especially the parts where friends and family of the victims were kept in the dark by law enforcement, and the machinations that went on as Kohberger’s trial got closer. What we hope that Garbus communicates is the fear that swept the relatively tight-knit college town of Moscow as police investigated, and the attention that this trial was going to get if it had gotten underway. It was probably going to be the most media-saturated trial in the state’s history and there were so many people clamoring to witness it a lottery system for gallery seats was being put in place.
Of course, a lot of that is now moot, thanks to Kohberger’s guilty plea. We’re not sure we’re going to get any context of the behind-the-scenes negotiations that led to that plea. Perhaps we will, but given the gag order that was in place at the time this was filmed, we doubt that.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: As we see investigators walk through the house via shots through the windows, members of the friend group express why they had so much fear: They came to the realization that the group may have been stalked by this killer, and the person is still out there.
Sleeper Star: No one really stands out.
Most Pilot-y Line: One of the members of the friend group mentions that she knew something was really wrong when she saw police string yellow caution tape around the perimeter of the property. We would imagine that would be a pretty big sign of a problem.
Our Call: STREAM IT. One Night In Idaho: The College Murders takes its time and makes sure the audience gets the entire picture of what happened in Moscow, Idaho on that November night in 2022.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.