The Idaho Student Murders

As "The Idaho Student Murders" (2025 release; 87 min.) opens, it is "November 13, 2002" and we are in "Moscow, Idaho", home to the campus of the University of Idaho. The place is described as "the typical college town", and there hasn't been a murder in Moscow in YEARS. We are then introduced to 4 students and close friends, all attending the University of Idaho. At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this true crime documentary is directed Catharine Park ("Wanted Man"). Here she reassesses the brutal 2022 murders of 4 students at the University of Idaho: who did this? How? And why? I am sorry to report that what could've been a super interesting documentary is alas far from it. Way too much time is spent on remembrances of the 4 victims by family and friends. And without spoiling anything, I can also add that seemingly obvious questions regarding the efforts to find who did this, are never addressed. From just a quick glance, there apparently are several other documentaries and/or documentary series streaming on other platforms about these events. I didn't watch the others, and don't plan to either. As for the reviewer who rates this 10 stars (an absolute PERFECT score for apparently the BEST documentary EVER), a reality check may be in order.

""The Idaho Student Murders" started streaming recently on Peacock, and I just watched it the other night. It makes for a quick watch, but even with that, I'm not so sure I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in these events. Instead you may want to check out some of the other documentaries on these events currently streaming on Amazon Prime, HBO Max, etc.

They drag 10min of story and content for 1:40mim documentary.

Not worth it.

Sounds like someone put together what they knew based on instagram headlines. And the "experts" don't really say anything worth while.

Not explaining just bare minimum information.

It's worse than a high school student film.

This documentary is frustrating for a few reasons!

1. This is still an ongoing case. They could've waited for the actual trial to take place before releasing this documentary. But instead, it decides to release a month before the actual trial, it will probably release a sequel after the trial. Why not just combine it into one full long documentary, I don't know why they decided to split it up!

2. Most the documentary, there just wasting time to just fill in runtime. Right from the start you tell us who this criminal is. But then you tell us the journey on how you discover that, still trying to convince us its not him although you told us it was him from the start!

3. There's a lot of moments where I'm like yes, this is well put together. But there's also a lot of other moments, when people you're interviewing are not people should be interviewing for a documentary. Such as a social media influencer! Theres a million other people you could've done, but since you want to do a sequel to this documentary. You have to meander for most of it.

And that's where the main problem comes across for this documentary, it's not completed. Most of it is is wasting time because it's not the full story. You don't have a full story to tell yet. They could've waited for a trial, but instead milked all the set up before the end.

Does the documentary do its job? Yes, I was hooked the entire time, I was invested in this case and I wanted to see how it ended.

But that has not happened yet.

I Tend to be hooked to these type of documentaries, so I still enjoyed it. I still want to see what happens next, but frustrating on how the final product was made.

This reeks of tick tock and Instagram crime sleuths. The poor grammar and unpolished cadence of speech is almost unbearable. This is more of a compilation of news reports and random "experts" sharing their insights into a crime they had no part in nor any new information for the public. Truly sad that self proclaimed journalists can report on behalf of these families who lost their loved ones in such a tragic manner. These victims and their families deserve a more professional, sensitive and insightful documentary. As a viewer I felt as though documentary creators were trying to fill time by repeating the same details over and over.

Using the strange sound of a man heavily breathing made this almost unwatchable. Four people were killed and you putting a ridiculous track in the background took away from the seriousness and the honoring the victims. The young reporter who was talking to Kaylee's brother had an awful smirk on her face. I don't know why she was smiling while he described his inability to grieve. The author who wrote a book mid trial was the featured speaker and why? He could have jeopardized the trial and sounds like he embellished to make a buck. There are better documentaries that tell the story of Kaylee, Zana, Maddie and Ethan much more respectfully. Head to Amazon to watch.