New Guilty Pleasure - “Chilling Adventure of Sabrina”

If you think Hello Kitty is a Satan tool and in Led Zeppelin music playing backwards, you hear the black masses, absolutely don’t read this text and don’t watch the new TV series from Netflix “Chilling Adventure of Sabrina”.

The new Sabrina has it premier on Friday 27 of October and I already watched it all.
And as they announced at the very beginning of the series, it is very dark and contains occult elements, though is directed to young adult.
The series is based on a series of comics under the same title, published as part of Archie Horror since 2014, created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who is also the series show runner.

Obviously don’t confuse them with “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”, which came out in Archie Comics in the early 1960s, although both series combine the figure of Sabrina, it is the end of this similarity. When the Sabrina teenage witch is such a light tale about spitting spells, flying on a broomstick and talking cat, while “Chilling Adventure of Sabrina” is an occult horror about black magic and necromancy.

Older viewers, including myself, associate Sabrine with a sitcom from the 90s under the title "Sabrina the Teenage Witch” with Melissa Joan Hart in the main role and her puppet talking cat. Sabrina was a foolish but sympathetic teenager, thanks to which she conquered the hearts of the audience. It is estimated that about 17 million people have been regally tracking the fate of the witch on ABC TV.

Fortunately for us, times have changed and you can afford to produce a bolder, more fantastic series. There is no more obligation to create TV family films, from which the creators of the "Chilling Adventure of Sabrina" eagerly benefited. The new production is completely free of sitcom elements. There are dark motifs in it, I don’t even bother to say that it's like a sequel to "Rosemary's Baby." The child is grown up, she is 16 now and has to be married to Satan.

Thanks to the creators of the "Chilling Adventure of Sabrina" it is initially compared to “Riverdale”. In my opinion, this is a harming comparison, "Riverdale" after the first season got lost somewhere in scenario. The only thing that links them is the climate, the difficulty in determining the time of the action and the comic background.

The series is heavily stylized, at times it has a sense of excessive aesthetics, the strong influence of the retro climate, numerous references to the 60s. In turn, in the musical layer we can find the influences of the 80's and 90's, the soundtrack perfectly completes the whole series.

History is very modern so it is difficult to see in what historical period the series takes place. Sabrina has a great script and I hope that individual threads as well as the whole story will be consistently developed. For those who have already seen Sabrina and share my admiration, I happy to tell that Netflix is already creating the second season.

Show runner Aguirre-Sacasa from the very beginning was free to create, which promises well for the future that the plot will not get lost in the absurd threads.
When it comes to cast, Kiernan Shipka fits perfectly into retro aesthetics. In the end, she was a daughter of Don Drapper in "Mad Man", a production that was played in the 1960s. The actress very neatly balances on the verge of naivety and darkness, which accompanies her studies of black magic. She is stubborn, self-aware, which means that Sabrina appears a lot feminist threads. Finally, at a very symbolic level, the main character refuses to submit herself to the imposed role and fights for it with all available agents.

I think that the best shot was choice Lucy Davis and Miranda Otto in the roles of Sabrina’s aunt. They are so different, each of them brings completely divergent emotions to the series. Both are very eccentric which adds greatness. Generally, you can get the impression that the female part of the cast fits perfectly: Michelle Gomez as Mary Wardell vel Lilith or weird sisters are electrifying.

The biggest advantage of the "Chilling Adventure of Sabrina" is the formula, combining comictions in the form of a Gothic horror movie, gore elements, jump scare. The whole is kept in dark, saturated colors, sometimes exaggerated like a comic book. The series through the dark climate strongly stands out against other productions directed to young adult.

I’m convinced that the series will not only watch the intended age group, of course, provided that you are a fan of dark aesthetics and will swallow all the satanic, okutist motifs that have appeared.

I devoted the whole weekend to the "Chilling Adventure of Sabrina" and despite my initial fears, I discovered my new guilty pleasure.

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