In 1993, the bodies of three eight-year-old boys, all brutally murdered, were found in a shallow creek in West Memphis, Arkansas. A surprise confession implicated two teenagers known for their interest in the occult and their penchant for black clothes and heavy metal music. With remarkable access to the suspects, their families and the victims' families, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky have created an intimate study of these emotionally-charged trials as well as of that dark corner of contemporary American life in which "difference" carries its own sentence.