In Hulu’s dark, gripping “Under the Bridge,” adapted for television by Quinn Shephard and based on Rebecca Godfrey’s 2005 nonfiction account of the same name, the audience finds itself in the picturesque community of Victoria, British Columbia. After attending a party with her “friends” near the infamous Craigflower Bridge, 14-year-old Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta) never returns home. Much more than a retelling of a horrific true crime, “Under the Bridge” is a show about longing, otherness, race and the frailties of community. The series was greenlit in 2022, a week before Godfrey’s death at 54 from lung cancer.

The story has numerous characters and jumps around in time, but the series begins on Nov. 14, 1997, the day of Reena’s death. After months of trying to fit in with Josephine Bell (Chloe Guidry), a John Gotti-obsessed foster kid, and her minions Kelly Ellard (Izzy G) and Dusty Pace (Aiyana Goodfellow), Reena is unceremoniously booted out of the trio’s inner circle. As the bullied girl tries to regain her place in Jo’s favor, Rebecca (Riley Keough), haunted by a tragedy from her own childhood, returns to Victoria for the first time in a decade to write a novel. When news of Reena’s disappearance begins making waves across the island, the writer embarks on a quest to figure out what happened. Rebecca’s fixation causes tension with police officer Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone), a childhood friend, and Reena’s grief-stricken parents, Manjit (Ezra Farouke Khan) and Suman (an outstanding Archie Panjabi), who never got the chance to repair their relationship with their eldest child.

The murder of Reena Virk was and still is horrific. Using flashbacks and flash-forwards, “Under the Bridge” reveals how and why something so monstrous could have occurred. Months before her death, Reena is feeling ostracized due to her Indian heritage and her family’s faith as Jehovah’s Witnesses. She finds herself enamored of Jo — the manipulative teen has all the freedom, fearlessness and access Reena craves. Craving attention and camaraderie, Reena lets her behavior spiral out of control, leading to her expulsion from her parents’ home.

The unfolding events underscore that adolescents’ capacity for compassion is fragile and often informed by the actions of the grown-ups around them. As the adults try to make sense of the barbarity of Reena’s murder, “Under the Bridge” invites viewers into the kids’ perspectives and experiences, which inevitably colors their understanding of the young people involved in the crime. Rebecca is desperate to find the humanity in the perpetrators’ deeds as a way to absolve herself of past guilt, whereas Cam, an Indigenous woman, can’t help seeing the racial undertones framing the attack on Reena.

Shephard and the series’ writers are careful not to spotlight the violence visually. Instead, the brutality of what’s done to Reena is recounted through the viewpoints of the teens who were present in her last moments. Moreover, as Rebecca struggles to write her book — now devoted to Reena and the teens involved in her death — she realizes the story she is searching for isn’t there. Instead, in facing the truth about those who perpetrated Reena’s death, she is forced to confront the errors of her past and how they inform the present.

Sharp and devastating, with a ’90s hip-hop soundtrack laced throughout, “Under the Bridge” is an absorbing examination of cruelty, why some people receive empathy over others and how our own biases can prevent us from recognizing the truth. The series is a reminder of the anguish of rejection for teens, especially girls — and how that can manifest into something grotesque. Without proper guidance or a listening ear, the torment they inflict upon one another seems, in many ways, inevitable.

The first two episodes of “Under the Bridge” premiere April 17 on Hulu with new episodes dropping weekly on Wednesdays.