20 years after a young girl’s sister is killed while the family is vacationing in the Caribbean, she comes across one of the accused killers in her neighborhood of New York City.
This limited series, on Hulu, is split between following the story of Allison (West Duchovny), an 18-year-old murder victim, and her sister Emily (Alycia Debnam-Carey), only twenty years later. Alison is a Princeton student, who is just coming into her own with ideas and beliefs that bring her into conflict with quite a few people on the island.
Clare, on the other hand, is all grown up now and living in New York with her boyfriend. We witness her adjustment as she moves into a new apartment in a predominantly Caribbean neighborhood.
The mirroring of these two sisters is lovingly done, both of them have grown up strong but in different ways. Allison’s fresh belief in herself and what is right and wrong is downright naive next to Clare’s brutal view of how broken both she and the world around her is. Watching the two of them interact on the island is painful, knowing what we know about Allison’s demise, but it is also impossible to pull away from. We keep wondering when the misstep is going to be, wondering what night is the fateful one, and we keep watching poor Clare for the moment that she turns from the sweet, scared girl into a deeply scarred one.
In the series, every man and a couple of women act ‘suspect’. Their motivations are shady, their behavior is terrible, and each and every one of them could have done it. Yet, we all know who is going to get blamed thanks to the obvious inequality of privilege on display — Edwin (Jayden Elijah) and Clive (Josh Bonzie), two young black men working at the resort.
Clive and Edwin are two young, impoverished men trying to make their way on the island surrounded by the casual, white wealth of the tourists. They are both perfectly cast and superbly acted. Clive is the brooding, silent type that you are sure has a heart of gold. Edwin is the mischievous rake, that you can’t help but forgive nearly everything. They play off one another so well that you have no trouble believing they have been friends for their entire lives.
Murder is hard on the family of the victim, and in this world of true crime podcasts and an internet that keeps things alive forever, it is even harder. Having to deal with the idea of a loved one’s death, when it is unexpected and mostly unsolved, is soul-crushing — having the lurid details splattered over hundreds of news outlets and thousands of websites is worse. Watching a woman relive her sister’s traumatic death is heart-wrenching, but in many ways I feel like it is a more honest look at the impact of a murder on a family.
Watching this one week at a time is going to be tough, but might be worth the tension if you are a true-crime buff. Otherwise, let this one simmer and binge it when the last episode comes out.
RIOTUS 