The murders in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13th, 2022, drew international attention due to the senseless manner in which they destroyed perceptions of safety. As two of the grieving parents in Prime Video’s “One Night in Idaho: The College Murders” point out, sending your kids to college is supposed to be a joyous occasion, a time to celebrate them taking steps toward their adult selves, but this mother and father had only a week of that before their world was shattered. Director Liz Garbus approaches this already exhaustively reported story from the angle that has allowed this talented filmmaker to navigate the choppy waters of true crime: focusing on the people left behind. In works like “Lost Girls” (about the Gilgo Beach serial killer) and the incredible “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” (about Michelle McNamara and her hunt for the Golden State Killer), Garbus has emphasized the lingering cost of crime instead of the salacious details. For the first two hours of the four-part “One Night in Idaho,” you don’t even hear the name of the man responsible for these horrible crimes as Garbus and co-director Matthew Galkin (“Murder in the Bayou”) center the victims and, most importantly, those they left behind.
Using almost exclusively interviews with friends and family members of the victims, “One Night in Idaho” deftly chronicles the relationships within 1122 King Road on that fateful night. One thing that is noticeable about “Idaho” is how much of young people’s lives are chronicled online and through digital photos in the current era. We see what feels like hundreds of shots of Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, making them feel three-dimensional through their smiling faces and the warm stories told of them by loved ones. As a true crime fan, I can tell when this kind of background material is done in an exploitative, hurried manner—which is usually the case as productions rush the personal stuff to get to the grisly details—and when it’s done with an empathetic, loving touch. The latter is true here as we hear stories of Ethan from his twin brother or warm memories from Maddie’s heartbroken mother. One can tell that the people closest to the victims of the Idaho murders trusted Garbus and Galkin, and that trust is the foundation for why this series works (and it’s why so many similar shows feel like exploitation).
Of course, “One Night in Idaho” has to get to its title, but Garbus and Galkin don’t linger over the details—don’t expect crime scene photos or elaborate analysis of the crimes. The investigative midsection of the series interestingly unpacks the role of social media in the case, including how groups sprang up online to try to solve it, complete with irrational conspiracy theories. The revelation that the murderer likely interacted with people in one of those groups is a chilling one, but, even here, Garbus & Galkin avoid manipulation by never straying too far from the victims and their loved ones.
As someone points out in the four-episode series, the reveal that the murderer was Brian Kohberger, who just pleaded guilty and will die in prison for these crimes, only made it more sensational. Was it a random crime? This kind of unmotivated multiple homicide is exceedingly rare, which forces Garbus & Galkin to wade into the waters of trying to explain Kohberger’s mindset. Still, they don’t get lost there like lesser filmmakers would. Classmates detail an odd questionnaire created by Kohberger in his WSU criminology program and his obsession with a specific mass murderer, but there aren’t simple answers to what happened in Moscow that horrible night, and “One Night in Idaho” understands that.
The only real issue with “One Night in Idaho” is a common one in the streaming era: I’m not convinced there isn’t a stronger version that runs the length of a feature film, rather than four hour-long episodes. Having said that, I walked away from a series about a case that I thought I knew well with a much stronger sense of who Xana, Maddie, Ethan, and Kaylee were as people. And that matters. If the True Crime genre is going to avoid the stigma of exploitation that so often creatively derails it, it’s going to have to shift the focus from perpetrator to victim. “One Night in Idaho” is a step in the right direction.
On Prime Video Friday, July 11th. Entire series screened for review.
