Each week, Terry and Joe discuss Blumhouse’s true-crime docuseries Fall River on EPIX.

Spoilers follow for Episode 1, “My Soul to Keep.”

TERRY

I wasn’t quite sure what we were signing up for, when we requested to cover Fall River, Joe...but the content warning that opens the series threw me for a loop. It’s important to note at the top that this docuseries about a series of murders in Fall River, Massachusetts, is about disturbing content. Warnings suggest that there will be graphic depictions of rape, torture, murder, abuse, drug use, animal cruelty throughout the series.

Episode one, “My Soul to Keep”, doesn’t mince words. Right off the top it shows a dramatic reenactment of police officers coming across a young woman’s dead body under the high school bleachers. I don’t need to go into the trauma forced on her body because it’s a lot. But it’s this murder that establishes the central point of mystery.

Called the Fall River Cult Murders, “My Soul to Keep” starts with the woman’s body and then gives a montage of the hype surrounding the so-called Satanic panic of the 80s while also briefly setting the stage. Fall River has a history of shocking events; the docuseries briefly mentions the fact that the city is also known as the location of the Lizzie Borden murders one hundred years prior. This, contrasted with buzzwords like “ritualistic killers” and “satanic cults”, as well as the discovery of bones, establishes the moral panic and fear that gripped America in the late 70s and into the 80s...all set to a very bombastic and over-the-top score that verges on unfortunate parody.

Eventually the first episode falls into an easy rhythm of talking heads of police detectives, crime scene reporters and investigative journalists, as well as Fall River residents and friends of the deceased. These are coupled with dramatic reenactments.

The show introduces some of the main people associated with the first murder, which is revealed to be of seventeen-year-old Doreen Levesque, a transient sex worker in Fall River. The early parts of this episode focus on the “seedy underbelly” of Fall River, where sex workers worked mere blocks from the police department and each block was controlled by a particular pimp. Two of the pimps - Carl Drew and Robin Murphy - were competing with each other in that two or three block area.

Carl Drew, in particular, gets the most emphasis. He was ultimately imprisoned as a cult leader who used Satan as a way of controlling his sex workers. As the first episode establishes the main culprits and relationships, it puts their photos on a digital corkboard, tracing red digital thread between them to indicate their relationships to each other. Split in chapter titles like “The King of Hell” and “Satan’s Wrath” and using interviews with homicide detectives like Alan Silvia, private investigator Chris Hayes and “satanic crimes” detective sergeant Alan Alves, “My Soul to Keep” sets the audience up to suspect that Carl Drew killed Doreen in a satanic ritual before ending on note that suggests things aren’t quite so clean-cut.

I’m not really sure where to start with this one, Joe. It’s a slickly-produced docuseries with high production values, but the fact that it uses dramatic reenactments of, for instance, the police discovering Doreen’s body gives it a rather seedy feel.

It also makes me question any of the footage used in the film. For instance, while one of Fall River’s residents talks about the child of one of the sex workers, Fall River introduces footage...but is it stock footage? Is it of a different baby? The fact that so much of the first episode is focused around these recreations, it puts a pall on the rest of the content for me. It also toes that line of exploitation that seems inherent in the True Crime genre, but feels a little egregious here, given the subject matter. And, of course, the way the narrative spins us up on its Satanic Panic narrative before trying to pull the rug out by the episode’s end has become an almost cliche, now.

But I’m curious what you thought, Joe.

What were your first impressions of Fall River? Was this what you expected the show to be about or were you somewhat blindsided like me? Did the structure of “My Soul to Keep” work for you? Are you familiar with the Satanic Panic of the 80s in America and did it stretch up into Canada?

JOE

I’ll confess that I didn’t quite know what to expect when we signed up for this. The Satanic Panic is a gap in my true crime knowledge, in part because - as you questioned - it wasn’t much of a thing in Canada (as far as I know). My understanding of it prior to Fall River was that it was almost comically large (over)reaction by well-meaning middle class folks who got swept up in the Manson murders and believed that people like daycare workers were planning to sacrifice their toddlers in satanic rituals.

That kind of narrative does emerge in the back half of “My Soul To Take”, as Carl Drew is painted more and more like a boogeyman that everyone was afraid of, in no small part because it was believed that he was a cult leader. The fact that even the police were seemingly afraid of him and his reputation speaks volumes; at one point journalist Maureen Boyle even questions how pimps like Drew (and to a lesser extent Murphy) were able to operate so close to the police station. A lot of this first episode of the series is laying the groundwork that Fall Rivers is a kind of lawless town: the police are ineffective and apt to get you killed, crime and murder and pervasive, and the most powerful criminal is an untouchable Satanist.

It’s compelling stuff, particularly the grandly theatrical way that the show tries to pull the rug out from under audiences at the end. After spending nearly fifty minutes establishing that Drew is a monster who killed Doreen and Karen Marsden, another sex worker (and Robin Murphy’s lesbian lover*), the narrative flips and the present day talking heads begrudgingly acknowledge that Murphy’s testimony against Drew may have been fabricated and that he’s innocent (of Karen’s murder).

It’s a good hook; a solid cliffhanger. It also feels excessively fabricated.

*I flagged this, in part, because the repeated references to Murphy’s sexuality come off feeling mildly salacious. Murphy’s age (17), gender (female) and sexual orientation (lesbian) are treated like shocking facts by several interviewees. On one hand, this may be reflective of the culture of the early 80s, but it also feels strangely inappropriate. Fall River treats Murphy’s relationship with Karen Marsden like juicy gossip and it is borderline icky.

Admittedly this is familiar territory for true crime docuseries (I was reminded of our recent coverage of Hulu’s Sasquatch): the facts are necessarily malleable, but the storytelling and the order in which the audience is told particular details are. This is very clearly director James Buddy Day and his team wringing events for maximum dramatic effect and while I don’t begrudge the series for being sensational, it’s enough behind the scenes manipulation to make me pause.

Which brings to mind your question/observation about the reenactments. These are frequently my least favourite part of true crime series because they’re so inherently false and deliberately constructed; it’s a far more exploitative way to generate an emotional reaction in audiences. It’s an unusual decision here: much of the recreated footage involves actors playing the two murdered women (whose injuries are later described in excessive detail), although there is also a great deal of actual photographs and crime scene photos available.

For me, Fall River is walking the line of being exploitative, though it’s possible that individuals who consume a lot of true crime will find this par for the course. As it stands, “My Soul To Keep” is a captivating portrait of a bygone era dominated by crime and lawlessness, when women in particular were in damage of being exploited and murdered by men. The first episode sets up a compelling mystery that challenges the truth of a nearly 40 year old series of murders and though I have some apprehensions about some of Fall River’s creative decisions, I’m intrigued to see where this all goes.

We’ll find out when we hop over to QueerHorrorMovies next week to discuss episode two, “Deal With The Devil.”