West Memphis, Arkansas, May 1993: three eight-year-old boys are found dead in a drainage ditch in a wooded area locals call Robin Hood Hills, hogtied with their own shoelaces. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky get courtroom access most documentary crews never get, filming the arrest and trial of three teenagers, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr., whose main connection to the crime seems to be that they wear black, listen to metal, and read about Wicca. Misskelley's confession, given after hours of police questioning without a lawyer present and full of details that contradict the physical evidence, becomes the case's central problem. The film sits in the courtroom for the defense's forensic experts, the grieving parents, and the prosecutors selling the jury on Satanic ritual as motive with almost no physical evidence tying the boys to the murders. Interviews with the accused, their families, and the victims' parents run alongside trial footage, and the film's real subject turns out to be how a small town's fear finds a plausible target.