Netflix Series on Idaho Killings Is Short on Definitive Answers

In Slate, Scaachi Koul reviews the new Netflix documentary on the murder of four University of Idaho students and finds it to be "as capable and explicatory as any of the others." Just don't expect any aha moments about Bryan Kohberger, the Ph.D. student who admitted killing them but who is now attempting to withdraw that admission and go to trial. "You won't leave this Netflix series with a better understanding of why Kohberger may have killed all these people," writes Koul of The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare.

The three-part documentary floats incel-style misogyny and mental illness as possible drivers, and Koul notes that those answers feel both plausible and frustratingly familiar. "Maybe the hope of watching all these documentaries about young lives snuffed away is that we find something more tangible, a reason for carnage that can be remedied or studied or scientifically corroborated." But that's rarely the case, and isn't so here. Victims, "it seems, are all too often young women in a college class, gearing up for an entire lifetime of protecting themselves against unknowable male dangers." Read the full review, in which Koul warns viewers they will be "awash in grief" by watching.