In the current era of nonstop true crime content, the 1997 murder of teenager Reena Virk in the small British Columbia town of Saanich has acquired a new cachet. Whatever the corporate motivation for the new Hulu series about her death may be, though, Under the Bridge is a sensitive and thoughtful drama about a horrible crime with more on its mind than just feeding the never-ending true crime pipeline.
The show takes that sensitivity from Rebecca Godfrey's book of the same name, and series creator Quinn Shephard involved Godfrey directly in the show's development, inserting her as a presence in the story to a greater extent than she was in real life. Godfrey herself died in 2022, but Under the Bridge is a testament to her efforts to humanize the easily dismissed teenagers involved in Reena's death. Shephard and her collaborators take significant liberties with Reena's story — one that was a national scandal in Canada — but in the process they create a fuller picture of life in the suburban enclave of Vancouver Island.
Although writer Rebecca (Riley Keough) and police officer Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone) are the central characters, Under the Bridge doesn't minimize Reena (Vritika Gupta) or her attackers. The show takes its time understanding everyone connected to the central tragedy. In one midseason interlude episode, that even extends all the way back to Reena's grandparents, Indian immigrants to Canada in the 1940s. A detour like that could feel superfluous, but Under the Bridge emphasizes the importance of family and heritage for all of its characters — and how their pasts shape where they end up, both positively and negatively.
For Reena, that involves rejecting the traditions of her family, who are double minorities as Indian-Canadians and Jehovah's Witnesses. She prefers to hang out with high school queen bee Josephine Bell (Chloe Guidry), a troublemaker who lives in a foster home and idolizes mobsters like John Gotti. Josephine is Reena's "friend" inasmuch as she can use her to make herself look more powerful and important, while the volatile Kelly Ellard (Izzy G.) is Josephine's actual bestie.
That typical teen-girl conflict between genuine and performative friendship comes to a violent climax when Josephine decides to enact retribution for Reena spreading malicious rumors. A group of teens lure Reena to a gathering under a local bridge, where they savagely beat her. After she recovers and tries to walk away from the attack, two of the assailants remain behind to make sure she stays down.
The details of Reena's murder trickle out over the course of eight episodes, but never in a way that feels frustrating or exploitative. Rebecca, returning to her hometown after years away, latches onto the case as a way to bring empathy to marginalized teens, and she's especially protective of accused murderer Warren Glowatski (Javon Walton). Rebecca and Cam have a shared past, and they warily reconnect, often at odds both personally and professionally, but both determined to do the right thing for young people they see as reflections of themselves.
Cam is a fictional character, and adding in the personal story between her and Rebecca threatens to derail focus from the real victims and perpetrators. But Keough and Gladstone bring genuine fragile humanity to their performances, providing more than just an entry point for the audience. The teen actors are just as good, especially Guidry as the posturing, gangster rap-obsessed Josephine, who refuses to believe that she's not equivalent to the mafia figures she's seen in movies.
There are times that Under the Bridge feels meandering, and some of the key figures in the case don't get entirely fleshed out until later episodes. But considering how easy it would have been to just translate Godfrey's book into a sensationalistic thriller, the show deserves credit for finding deeper truths about identity, influence and forgiveness — even if it has to bend some of the facts to get there.
Under the Bridge
