CNN
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Regardless of being primarily based on a grim true-crime yarn, “Underneath the Bridge” makes a number of poor selections in translating the guide to the display screen, starting with inserting the writer, Rebecca Godfrey, into the story. This bridge into the acquainted waters of troubled teenagers thus proves most notable as Lily Gladstone’s follow-up to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” albeit in a fairly drab position because the native cop investigating the case.
The center of this eight-episode Hulu collection offers with 14-year-old Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta), whose palpable longing to slot in together with her friends unfolds in opposition to the backdrop of understanding a few of them took half in beating and killing her. These occasions shocked the Canadian city of Victoria in 1997, offering the inspiration for Godfrey’s guide.
Like “13 Reasons Why,” the controversial Netflix collection, and earlier than that fare just like the 1986 film “River’s Edge,” the story traffics within the unsettling callousness of teenagers even earlier than the fashionable period of social media. Reena’s disappearance, and eventual discovery, additionally serves as each guardian’s nightmare, with Archie Panjabi (“The Good Spouse”) and Ezra Faroque Khan as her understandably frantic after which devastated mother and pop.
Instructed via flashbacks, “Underneath the Bridge” errs by making a separate thread round Rebecca (Riley Keough, contemporary off one other streaming present in “Daisy Jones & the Six”), a author returning to her hometown who skilled her personal tragedy there years earlier than. Virtually instantly, she reconnects with the sheriff, Cam (Gladstone), with whom she shares historical past, whereas conducting what quantities to a parallel real-time investigation into what transpired.
It’s a clumsy, not-very-convincing assemble, as are a lot of the particulars surrounding Rebecca and Cam, which really feel strained or just drained. The previous nearly instantly feels sympathy for many who might need been accountable, whereas the latter grapples with working for her dad (Matt Craven).
These parts characterize distractions from the basic problems with what occurred to Reena, what motivated her attackers and the collective silence from her friends that adopted the tragedy.
Certainly, the collection fares significantly higher when its focus shifts to the kids, together with Chloe Guidry because the merciless ringleader of the lady gang – recognized dismissively in police circles as “Bic ladies,” a reference to the disposability of Victoria’s troubled youths – and Javon “Wanna” Walton (“Euphoria”) as one of many boys concerned.
Tailored by writer-producer Quinn Shephard (“Not Okay”), “Underneath the Bridge” builds modest suspense across the particular particulars relating to who killed Reena, however that may’t completely offset its questionable structural selections. The issues don’t diminish the heartbreaking nature of the story at its core, however they do make wading via eight episodes of this restricted collection at occasions really feel like a bridge too far.
“Underneath the Bridge” premieres April 17 on Hulu.