Under the Bridge review: A truly depressing true-crime drama

In the first episode of Under the Bridge, Hulu’s relentlessly grim new true-crime drama, writer Rebecca Godfrey (Riley Keough) comes home to Victoria, British Columbia for the first time in 10 years. She’s flown in from New York to research her next book, about the “misunderstood girls” of her gorgeous but gloomy coastal town. Growing up, Rebecca was one of them — a rebellious kid who hid pot under the floorboards in her bedroom and partied with friends at an abandoned warehouse. She never really wanted to come back to Victoria, but the muse of her past misery beckons.

Early on in her visit, Rebecca hears about Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta), a local 14-year-old girl who went missing after going to an outdoor party. Sensing a hook for her story, Rebecca begins chatting up a band of teenagers — including Josephine Bell (Chloe Guidry) and Dusty Pace (Aiyana Goodfellow), who live at the Seven Oaks foster care group home, and Kelly Ellard (Izzy G.) and Warren Glowatski (Javon Walton) — who were among the last people to see Reena alive. Rebecca’s informal investigation pushes her into an awkward reunion with Officer Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone), who was her best friend until about a decade ago, when a mysterious falling out ended their relationship.

Over the course of the season, Under the Bridge jumps between past and present timelines, chronicling Reena’s final days — including her clashes with her mother (Archie Panjabi), a devout Jehovah’s Witness — and the investigation into her murder, as Rebecca and Cam sort through the rumors and lies to uncover who killed her, and why.

The more we learn about Reena and the Seven Oaks girls she so desperately wanted to impress, the clearer it becomes that the most terrifying thing about this story is its underlying mundanity — that fleeting mean-girl squabbles and adolescent angst could lead to an utterly senseless death. But writer Quinn Shephard (Blame), who adapted Godfrey’s book for the screen, clutters Under the Bridge with several half-formed plots that dilute the powerful narrative about sad, mad, and lonely kids channeling their pain into violence.

The real Rebecca Godfrey, who passed away in 2022, wrote Under the Bridge from the perspective of the kids and investigators involved. The series, however, makes Rebecca a key protagonist. It’s an understandable impulse, given Godfrey’s ability to put the teen subjects at ease, which allowed them to tell her things they wouldn’t admit to other adults. Still, the show can’t decide if it's Rebecca’s — and to a lesser degree, Cam’s — story, or the story of Reena and the kids who ended her life so callously. From the outside, it’s clear the focus should be on the latter, but that poses a more practical problem: Would Hulu really gamble on a character-driven drama starring a group of mostly unknown young actors, excellent as they are? Probably not.

So, Keough and Gladstone loom large on the poster, and Under the Bridge is obligated to place a clumsy emphasis on the strained, vaguely defined relationship between Rebecca and Cam. Even six episodes in, when the two have a blowout fight over their conflicting interests in Reena’s case, it still isn't clear what the precise source of their pent-up anger and frustration actually was. The confrontation is well-acted but unearned.

Despite the uneven writing, the performances in Under the Bridge are consistently superb. The young actors are particularly impressive. Gupta, whose cherubic face belies an underlying intensity, vividly conveys Reena’s impotent teenage anger, while Goudry reveals the fragile spirit under Josephine’s wannabe-gangster bluster. Izzy G. brings a chilling edge to Kelly’s teenage insouciance, and Goodfellow is sweet and sympathetic as Dusty, who can’t summon the courage to do the right thing. Walton, who used his babyface to such discomfiting effect as Euphoria’s Ashtray, is absolutely heartbreaking as Warren, a soft-spoken, neglected kid grappling with anguish he just can’t process.

Keough plays Rebecca with a kind of dreamy and alluring reserve, though her interactions with Warren veer uncomfortably close to flirtation. (If that was the intent… um, okay.) Gladstone elevates Cam beyond the character’s stern-yet-concerned cop framework. Though a subplot concerning Cam’s Native ancestry — she was adopted into a white family as a baby — feels shoehorned in, it at least gives Gladstone another emotional avenue to explore. Panjabi is reliably affecting as Reena’s shattered mother, Suman, and American Idol contender-turned-actor Anoop Desai is a standout as Reena’s kind and understanding uncle, Raj.

“You poisoned our life, and I need it to stop,” Suman tells one of the accused killers. “I forgive you… It’s the only way out of all of this.” It’s a devastating scene, and one that underscores the difficulty of watching the terrible story of Reena Virk's death unfold. True-crime shows — whether scripted or documentary — are almost always depressing, but seeing the perpetrators caught and held accountable can make the experience more bearable. With Under the Bridge, though, the justice is yet another tragedy — more young lives destroyed to pay for one so pointlessly taken. Grade: B-

Under the Bridge premieres Wednesday, April 17, on Hulu.

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