The Big Picture

Hulu’s
Under the Bridge
is a refreshing take on true crime, delving into community dynamics and personal struggles with authenticity rather than merely aiming for shock.
Lily Gladstone gives a mesmerizing performance, bringing grace to the story.
The series navigates dark themes without veering into exploitative territory, offering a nuanced and haunting portrayal of the truth lurking beneath the headlines.

At this point, it’s a given that any work that has Lily Gladstone in it is made into something greater in her hands. In just last year alone, she commanded a series of spectacular films like the now essential American road movie The Unknown Country, the underseen animated vision Quantum Cowboys, the magnificent upcoming drama Fancy Dance, and, of course, the immense historical epic Killers of the Flower Moon. In each, she has shown a complete command of her craft, speaking volumes with even just silence and a piercing stare that can cut through all the surrounding noise. She is not just one of the best performers of her generation, but one of the best to ever do it. Like the outstanding performance in the Martin Scorsese film that earned her an Oscar nomination, the new Hulu series Under the Bridge seems poised to secure her an Emmy nomination if there is any justice in the world.

Similarly based on a book about real events, Under the Bridge makes some significant changes that reframe how we experience the story. While there are many, one of the most important is Gladstone’s character — as she is not based on any real person and is instead a fictional creation who immediately grabs your attention the moment she comes on-screen. Not only is she as good as ever in it, but there are some moments where she lays you flat as she gives the darkness of the story shape and form. It ensures her scenes become seared into your mind just as they are for her character. Even when she occasionally fades into the background, Gladstone also provides Under the Bridge’s best scenes, which increasingly come together into something unexpectedly shattering. In her eyes, we see what the series attempts to explore about the struggle for justice in a system where this is often in short supply.

Under the Bridge (2024) Reena Virk, a fourteen-year-old girl went to join friends at a party and never returned home. Seven teenage girls and a boy were accused of the savage murder.Release Date April 17, 2024 Cast Riley Keough , Izzy G , Chloe Guidry , Ezra Faroque Khan , Archie Panjabi , Vritika Gupta , Javon Walton , Aiyana Goodfellow , Lily Gladstone , Anoop Desai Main Genre Biography Seasons 1 Streaming Service(s) Hulu Showrunner Samir Mehta , Liz Tigelaar

What Is ‘Under the Bridge’ About?

Existing right alongside other more recent transcendent works of true crime, Under the Bridge is an admirable, often arresting attempt to take us beyond the headlines of the 1997 murder of Reena Virk (played by Vritika Gupta with heartbreaking authenticity and care) in Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. As we soon discover, the tragedy has deep roots in a community that often feels like it would rather overlook such acts. It isn’t a spoiler to say that a group of kids — namely Josephine (Chloe Guidry), Dusty (Aiyana Goodfellow), Kelly (Izzy G), and Warren (Javon Walton) — are soon believed to be involved, though the world that the adults have built for them is just as much part of this story. All the kids, particularly the girls, are standing on the precipice of a disaster that none of them can even begin to fully understand.

As we trace the relationships they have with each other, jumping back and forth through time, a portrait of a community in crisis begins to emerge. Leading the investigation is Officer Cam Bentland (Gladstone), who must convince an uncaring department to take the matter seriously while contending with whether her current career path is the best avenue to finding justice. At the same time, author Rebecca Godfrey (Riley Keough) has returned home and is now beginning to write about the case while carrying a tragedy of her own that ties her to Bentland. Their reunion serves as a brief respite from the pain of the world around them, but it too becomes tangled up in a case that provides no easy answers.

While Under the Bridge does withhold a bit at the beginning, with later revelations emerging concerning the characters’ respective pasts, the question of who killed Reena is only one of the many the show is asking. Instead, creator Quinn Shephard uses the pursuit of the truth as a way of revealing the various fault lines that run below the community’s surface. One standout episode involves flashing back to the lives of Manjit (Ezra Farouke Khan) and Suman (Archie Panjabi) before they started a family with Reena’s birth. It is an episode that, while lacking the other cast, is essential to the experience. Rather than narrowing the story to being just about the murder in isolation, cravenly reducing the family to the worst thing that happened to them, their hopes and aspirations also play out just as tragedy waits in the wings.

‘Under the Bridge’ Is a Reflective Take on True Crime

Such framing is painful yet truthful in a way that represents Under the Bridge at its best. This truthfulness extends to having Godfrey, the late writer of the book on which the show is based, become a primary character who is also not without flaws of her own. As we increasingly see, she struggles with how best to tell this story and how involved she should become. There are shades of a series like Sharp Objects, the least of which being that Matt Craven plays the local police chief in both, as the familial trauma Godfrey is carrying starts to bleed into the present. When we see the full scope of this via flashback, where Gladstone’s co-star from Fancy Dance, Isabel Deroy-Olson, plays the younger version of Bentland in a brief yet effectively understated scene, all the tension of the present is brought into painful focus. Godfrey is frequently just as lost as the kids she is writing about, often making decisions that feel driven by deeply personal motivations.

She isn’t an alcoholic like Amy Adams’ Camille Preaker was in Sharp Objects, but Keough’s character has formed a similarly messy connection to the case. Although the response to Godfrey’s book was met with criticism at the time for its approach to the real story in terms of how it recreated some events, the show’s framing honestly engages with the complicated relationships journalists may develop when covering something that is also close to their own lives. Increasingly, this is felt through Gladstone’s performance when Bentland confronts Godfrey about the way she is approaching the story. Is she covering a crime like this just so she can write a bestselling book, extracting and repackaging all the juicy details from a horrible loss? While Godfrey gets to go back to New York, everyone here must now live with the lasting impact of what she wrote about their lives.

Of course, as a police officer in a department that treats most of the girls in the community as disposable, Bentland has introspection of her own to do. While Keough is equally compelling, and it’s nice to see her acting without being buried under a heaping of sasquatch makeup, Gladstone emerges once more as the heart of the story. There is never an instant where she isn’t completely commanding the screen, as Bentland battles personal struggles while simultaneously being the only one to confront the crime’s deeper questions. All the young actors do good work in their parts, capturing a certain toughness and engaging with a harsh world in ways that feel genuine, but the moments where we see their world through Bentland’s eyes make the greatest impact, with her expressions tearing right into your soul.

Lily Gladstone Is Devastatingly Good in ‘Under the Bridge’
Image via Hulu

Though Gladstone is no stranger to television, also having been a must-see part of the outstanding series Reservation Dogs, the journey she takes us on in Under the Bridge is something different and more expansive in often unexpected ways. The way she navigates Bentland’s journey from steely resolve to finding the truth, which shifts into disillusionment at the department’s insufficiencies and beyond, into eventual anger at something that was kept from her, is nothing short of enthralling. In many ways, the show could have benefited from leaning into this more and letting Gladstone have more scenes to herself that aren’t caught up in the mystery. Even when some of the dialogue here and there can be a little clunky, making it feel as though it would have been better to let her presence be the driving force of the scene, she carries on with a mesmerizing determination that serves the character well.

Not only are there no easy answers or solutions to this story, but something that has been kept from Bentland since the very beginning. When some narration early on feels like it is attempting to tie things up a bit too neatly, the pain that remains etched on Gladstone’s face reminds us of the truth. Multiple episodes build to a scene with her staring directly into the camera and giving a performance that blows the doors off the whole thing, making it impossible to look away as she stares down some new revelation that you see the impact of. Bentland is imperfect and deeply flawed, though Gladstone plays her perfectly. She is operating on a wavelength that represents both the show and television itself at its very best.

There is a version of this show that didn’t handle the material with the same grace that Gladstone does. While the horrors of the story remain real, true crime far too often ends up feeling exploitative and more interested in sensationalism than authenticity. Under the Bridge, for the most part, finds itself more in understated yet unsettling company. For all the references to rap music and scenes with kids pretending to act out violence, the show remains aware of the dangers of creating a moral panic over superficial details that miss the full picture of the story. It doesn’t shy away from grappling with some of the more sinister elements, often capturing the violence we know is coming in slow motion before cutting away to the aftermath without reveling in it. However, where a lesser series could lean into shock, Under the Bridge refreshingly sidesteps most of this in favor of the darker truths one could spend lifetimes trying to understand. This crystallizes in a final sequence that, rather than settle for a clean resolution, lets the pain that accumulated over the season linger.

There is a hint of what could be healing that is also crossed with sadness in Gladstone’s eyes in one part of this closing montage that, in addition to proving once more how in command she is of every facet of her performance, is the only way Under the Bridge could have ended. When all is said and done, these are the parts of life that matter most. It is not about the books that are written or the thrills we get from digging into a crime. It’s the tranquility that can come from being with those you love. Where the tragedy comes from is realizing this when it is too late, and Gladstone’s quietly poetic performance gives a glimpse of what can be when you find that after a lifetime of searching. The pictures of the past eventually come down and the echoes of music fade from memory, though it is quiet moments like these that will remain eternal.

Under the Bridge (2024) REVIEWLed by the always spectacular Lily Gladstone, Under the Bridge is a true crime series that takes us behind the headlines to uncover more painful truths.ProsGladstone is outstanding once again, bringing grace to the series as her every expression cuts to the soul.Riley Keough is similarly compelling, capturing the fraught relationship between a writer and the story she is attempting to tell.Vritika Gupta’s performance as Reena offers heartbreaking authenticity and care. ConsThere are some moments of clunky dialogue when the powerful silence of the performances already serves the story well.

Under the Bridge premieres with its first two episodes April 17 on Hulu in the U.S. The remaining six episodes will be released weekly.

WATCH ON HULU