Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Season One, Part One (Review)

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
2018 Netflix
Season One
The Nicsperiment Score: 7/10

Culture is not centered around my demographic. I spent all of my ineligible-to-vote years in the 80's and 90's. The 90's, though, culture-targeted me relentlessly, and boy was that great. So many things I love come from the 90's. My high school years, in particular, nearly perfectly synched about with the years of one, Buffy Summers. Every week on the WB, Buffy and her friends heroically fought against vampires and other monsters, while simultaneously braving all the horrors of adolescence, for which the monsters they fought were often metaphors. The combination of supernatural horror elements with the high school experience is always ripe for exploration. 15 years after Buffy ended, enter Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
You may remember the character of Sabrina from the lighthearted 90's sitcom, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, or if you're a little older (and I'm not, so I don't), the apparently equally light comic books from the 70's. In the old silly sitcom, which featured a lovable talking cat sidekick, the clueless Sabrina unexpectedly discovers her witch powers on her sixteenth birthday. As Chilling Adventures of Sabrina begins, Sabrina, who already knows of her witch heritage, is also awaiting her sixteenth birthday...because on that night, she will have her dark baptism, and forever pledge her loyalty to Satan by signing her name in the Book of the Beast.
Yes, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is quite a bit darker than its source material and the 90's sitcom.  Sabrina's still being raised by her aunties, Zelda and Hilda Spellman, but here they're very likely to exclaim a hearty "Praise Satan" when something good happens. The duo have raised Sabrina since she was a small child, after Sabrina's witch father and mortal mother died in a plane crash. Here is the major reversal from Buffy, as Sabrina's two best friends at her mortal school, along with her boyfriend, Harvey, have no idea as to Sabrina's true identity. In Buffy's case, her friends knew, but her single mother at home was clueless (for a two seasons, at least). Meanwhile, while Sabrina's friends are at church on Sunday's, Sabrina's family is attending the Church of Night.
This dynamic actually works a little against the show--in Buffy's case, scenes with her mother could be a reprieve from the darkness, and didn't take away from her adventures or distract from the show's pacing and storytelling. On Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, our heroine's time with her friends and their storylines feel like distractions from the greater story. Who cares about Sabrina's non-witch friends' efforts to have banned books made available for reading at school, while elsewhere Sabrina is going toe-to-toe with Satan? Buffy was dating a brooding vampire with a demon inside him, who could return to the dark side with just a moment of pure happiness. Sabrina's boyfriend is an arty, wimpy dork.
Thus, the joys in Sabrina come from Sabrina's home life, as she spars and bonds with her aunties, hangs out with her stylish, house arrested warlock cousin, Ambrose, and attempts to embrace her half-witch heritage without selling her soul. Yes, it turns out Sabrina seems to be the only one to think that signing her autonomy away to the lord of darkness is not empowering. Sabrina decides early in the season--much to the chagrin of the devout Zelda--not to sign The Book of the Beast. However, as a concession, she still attends the Academy of Unseen Arts, that is, when she's not at her regular old boring mortal school. I never did figure how she found time to attend both, but it is what it is.
While Buffy the Vampire Slayer always had a season long story arc, and was in fact the first show the term "big bad (slang for season-long villain)" was coined around, its episodes were often episodic in nature, featuring a "monster of the week." Chilling Adventures of Sabrina feels much more dedicated to its greater storyline, though this can make individual episodes less distinguishable. There also isn't exactly a "big bad." There's a malevolent entity known as Lady Satan, masquerading as a mortal school teacher, who seems intent on manipulating Sabrina into signing her soul away, and there's Satan himself, often looming in the background unseen. This means, without a "Scooby Gang" of friends on the same page with her, the show is more about Sabrina getting into some kind of trouble because of her defiance, and her aunts, Ambrose, or Sabrina herself having to find a way to get her out of it. Thankfully, Sabrina's family is supremely interesting.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is owned by Mirando Otto as Aunt Zelda. You may remember Otto as Éowyn from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films. There, she was given one moment of ferocity, but here, Otto delightfully stomps through Sabrina's well-crafted sets, eating every peace of scenery in sight. The balance in tone she strikes is perfect, often exasperated by her niece's rebellion against usual witch behavior, yet in times of need, Sabrina's greatest ally. She bulls her way on the screen, smoking cigarette protruding from an antique holder, hamming it up on the show's excellent, gothically inspired sets, but is perfectly tender and down-to-earth when need be. Anyone who can read subtext and has kept up with The Nicsperiment for any amount of time can probably decipher that I am a devout Christian, but every time Zelda exhales a relieved "Thanks be to Satan" when the day has been saved, I laugh hysterically. I did the same at the end of Roman Polanski's horror classic, Rosemary's Baby, from which Chilling Adventures of Sabrina certainly takes some cues.
The (superb British) Office's Lucy Davis plays the more nurturing Aunt Hilda, her presence always charming, and Chance Perdomo imbues cousin Ambrose with a sort of goofy cool, distinctly British energy. The family unit is the engine that keeps Chilling Adventures of Sabrina moving, even when the mythology of the show is a little ill-drawn, or it defies belief that the young Sabrina is yet again the first person in the Church of Night to defy some ridiculous tenet.
Oh, yeah, and there's Sabrina herself. Kiernan Shipka impressed on Mad Men at an early age, to a degree that the producers found they were able to give her more and more material, as little Sally Draper grew into adolescence. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina proves that Shipka's performance in Mad Men was no fluke. She's brilliant here, imbuing the titular character with a steadfastness and righteousness in her morals and beliefs that isn't off-putting and is highly root-able. If she's able to keep this up, this role could become iconic.
Overall, the show's spooky vibe, great sets, rural Northeastern mountain town setting, and fun if not high production values, along with the Spellman family chemistry and performances, carry the show. The episodes are well-shot, even if the monsters are sometimes firmly in the "look at this guy in a rubber suit" camp. The show also employs a unique technique where the circular borders of the frame are blurry, which works as a sort of metaphor for the way Sabrina herself is operating in unfamiliar territory, or is being deceived or manipulated by forces she cannot understand or perceive.
The First Season of Buffy wasn't perfect--it was extremely uneven, and still searching for its tone. The first half of Sabrina's first season (the airing of the first half of the season is separated from the second by a full year) has got me hankering for the second--and there's a clear difference in Sabrina's physical presentation in that next year, as well. Reminds me of another show I may have mentioned a few times.
POSTSCRIPT: I feel like I should also draw attention to Adam Taylor's excellent score for the show, which creates some great horror film vibes, bouncing from dread-inducing, to some classic campy organ work. I just wish that I could say the same for the pop songs the show uses at select moments. Buffy always had the coolest bands and songs playing in the background, but the ones in Sabrina so far have sounded like Disney radio...they just don't fit.