Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a mess, but it's a gorgeous thrill ride when it works

Vox

The Netflix series starring Kiernan Shipka in the title role "struggles to figure out exactly what its tone is, and how to balance its darkness and its campiness," says Constance Grady. She adds: "Even Sabrina herself is left to fall a little flat. Shipka has a radiantly likeble screen presence, but throughout the first season she has little to do besides be determinedly plucky and also sometimes sad. While the show seems interested in Sabrina as an intellectual construct who can act out an allegorical dilemma between power and freedom, it doesn’t seem to be fully invested in her as a character, and never bothers to give her the psychological complexities it grants to her aunts, to her cousin Ambrose (a smoothly charming Chance Perdomo), or even to mean girl Prudence...Still, for as messy and as inconsistent as Sabrina can be, the moments that work are more fun and more stylish than anything else on television. And when it takes the time to really delve into the complexities of the witch power fantasy, to think about what it means when the fantasy gives women power from a male source, and that source has its own agenda, when it begins to play out its ideas about power and autonomy and obligation and gender — well, then, just like the title promises, it’s downright chilling."

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• Sabrina offers a smart and charming girlhood approach that goes beyond tired teen narratives
• Sabrina is a bit all over the place — caught somewhere between a bona fide piece of horror, a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the same, and a sincere coming-of-age story
• Sabrina suffers from typical Netflix bloat: Its first five episodes could be titled The Bureaucratic Complications of Sabrina the Young Adult Half-Satanist
• Sabrina throws a lot at the walls to see what sticks -- it contains a few shows fighting for dominance in the ambitious 10-episode season
• Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is literally too dark: You can't see what's going on in some scenes
• Sabrina feels lacking in the qualities that would distinguish it from The CW's Charmed and Legacies
• Kiernan Shipka's forceful performance keeps the show intact -- she is the greatest strength on a show trying to figure itself out
• Sabrina works best when it's more witch, less human: That's why the back half of Season 1 is a devilish delight
• It doesn't start to click until Episode 6, but then it demands to be binge-watched as storylines begin paying off
• The best, most archly funny thing about Sabrina is how dark the witchcraft is
• Sabrina has a Sabrina problem: "Called upon to simultaneously perform wide-eyed innocence, Chosen One superheroism, and activist rage, Shipka compromises with blankness"
• How the creepy opening credits were made
• Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa compares creating Riverdale vs. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
• Chilling Adventures seriously considered doing an homage to Sabrina the Teenage Witch