There’s something deeply unsettling about the way true crime has become a cottage industry in the streaming era. Just when you think the market has saturated with every possible angle of every unsolved mystery, along comes another tragedy—this time, the 2022 Idaho student murders—and suddenly, three platforms are racing to package it into bingeable content. Netflix’s latest offering, The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare, promises ‘unprecedented access’ to the victims’ families and police footage. But let me ask you: What does it say about our collective psyche that we need yet another documentary to process a crime so visceral it should have left us speechless?
Personally, I think the real story here isn’t the murders themselves, but the way we’ve turned grief into a spectator sport. When Joe Berlinger, the man behind Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, says this is the ‘definitive’ account, it’s not just about justice—it’s about control. Control over the narrative, over the trauma, over the public’s appetite for suffering. The trailer’s emphasis on bodycam footage feels less like a tribute to the victims and more like a calculated move to weaponize their pain for clicks. What makes this particularly fascinating is how the creators frame their work as an act of remembrance, yet the very act of documenting it risks reducing these four young lives to a case file.
Let’s talk about the victims. Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin—names that now exist primarily in the context of their deaths. The documentary’s director, Skye Borgman, claims the series will ‘keep them at the center of every decision.’ But how do you center someone’s humanity when their story ends in a basement? This isn’t just about memorializing them; it’s about commodifying their tragedy. The irony is that the more we dissect their lives, the more we risk erasing the very thing that made them unique. In my opinion, this is the paradox of modern true crime: The deeper we dig, the more we lose sight of the people we’re trying to honor.
And then there’s Bryan Kohberger, the confessed killer. His guilty plea has turned him into a footnote in this media frenzy. But what’s striking is how little attention is paid to the system that allowed this to happen. The DNA evidence that linked him to the crime was a fluke, not a triumph of justice. Yet the documentaries focus obsessively on the ‘how’ of the murders rather than the ‘why’ of the societal failures that let a PhD student spiral into violence. A detail that I find especially interesting is the lack of scrutiny around Kohberger’s mental health or the broader cultural factors that might have contributed to his actions. This raises a deeper question: Are we so conditioned to seek closure through spectacle that we ignore the systemic issues lurking in plain sight?
The competition between streaming platforms is another layer worth unpacking. Peacock, Amazon, and now Netflix—all vying for the same audience. This isn’t just about storytelling; it’s about brand positioning. The ‘definitive’ tagline is a marketing ploy, a way to differentiate in a crowded field. What many people don’t realize is that this race to document tragedy is less about truth and more about ownership. Who gets to own the story? Who profits from it? And at what cost to the families involved?
If you take a step back and think about it, the Idaho murders are a microcosm of our current obsession with true crime. We crave the grotesque, the lurid, the unflinching gaze into darkness. But what this really suggests is that we’re not just consuming stories—we’re participating in them. The line between viewer and voyeur is blurred, and the victims become collateral damage in our quest for entertainment. I can’t help but wonder: Will this documentary make us wiser, or will it just add another chapter to the cycle of consumption and forgetting? The answer, I fear, is already written in the ratings.
