Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Frequent cliffhangers and rapid storytelling make the series addictive. But more importantly, the writers still make smart use of self-contained episodes, a format that's sorely lacking in many streaming shows.

Finally there’s something fun to binge and share with friends.

Aguirre-Sacasa applies a light touch all around, building up the bigger themes without sacrificing character-driven moments--and without giving into the excessive twists that threw Riverdale off course in its sophomore season.

The ominous setting plays into the high stakes facing Sabrina and her friends, while the efficient scripts and lavish production design build an immersive, exciting space to explore them. To say it’s the best “Sabrina” yet is a bit reductive, but it’s certainly a new series worth screaming about.

Sabrina is still working on finding the ideal balance between gruesome horror and soapy teen drama, and occasionally wobbles a bit in the process. (If anything, the scale tips too far towards horror at times. This is the first show I can remember that presents Satanism as a valid lifestyle choice.) But when it’s clicking on all cylinders, its intoxicating mix of supernatural thrills and deadpan one-liners approaches the heights of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Sabrina is also possessed by the spirit of Kevin Williamson’s script for Wes Craven’s “Scream”: there’s a giddy cleverness in how it shouts out its own tropes and knowing riffs, in the service of minting a Faustian coming-of-age tale in which the retro atmosphere mingles with progressive gender politics.

Chilling Adventures ends up being a surprisingly complex interrogation of power, aware both of the necessity of women claiming it and of the consequences that usually follow when that power is used for revenge.

Shipka is best when Sabrina's mortal side is in play, when she's getting silly or excited with her friends, or bucking the satanic system. She has a lightness, a petite perkiness that happily echoes Melissa Joan Hart, TV's original, all-comedy Sabrina. I wasn't always convinced by the darker passengers the script assigned her. ... Still, I was invested enough to feel anxious about her inevitable bad choices; I wanted her to be all right, not merely to win.

Shipka has the gravitas to make this Sabrina the toughest yet, a violent femme who comes on like Joan of Arc crashing into a mastermix of Harry Potter and The Craft. ... This Netflix I-love-you-but-I’ve-chosen-darkness YA scream is more than just a great high-school horror trip. It proudly carries on 50 years of teenage witch tradition.

Sabrina appears to have been a role tailor-made for Shipka, and every one of the first season’s ten episodes is anchored by her captivating performance.

The series promises to be a fitting showcase for Shipka's considerable talent, as her Sabrina balances strength and vulnerability--earnestly and conflictedly in love with the world, justice, and with her own nascent powers--with inimitable style.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina proves to be a decadent, malevolent fable with sharp humor, distinct characterization and cast chemistry, opulent visuals, and a striking richness to its world-building.

The ingredients aren't always in proper proportion, yet enough of the magic works in this series to keep you under its spell, episode after episode. The acting styles can be all over the place as well, and still, due to the strong cast, it doesn't undo the spell.

The star is Kiernan Shipka, Sally from “Mad Men,” and she brings an appealingly sincere touch as she mixes phrases such as “dark baptism” into her teen lexicon. Her aunts, played by Miranda Otto and Lucy Davis, are kooky excellence. The show, “Riverdale”-adjacent, also has a great retro look with vestiges of foggy, pulpy horror.

Smart, engaging, thoroughly updated.

The show is at its best when it deals with the ways in which she is torn between two cultures--the mortal world of her high school and the witchy world of her birthright--and when it depicts how Sabrina’s avowed feminism conflicts with aspects of her religion.

The early run of episodes seems unsure where it fits between the winking, sardonic tone of Scream Queens or American Horror Story: Coven and the soapiness and melodrama of Riverdale. (And, like too many streaming series, episodes could be half as long and the narrative could move twice as fast.) But fear not. A creative light bulb seems to turn on as the season hits its final stretch. If only an actual one would turn on, too.

This is a show that’s willing to both revel in the witch fantasy and to think about its limitations in a way I’ve never quite seen a TV show do before, to examine about what kind of women are allowed to be powerful, and what kinds of boundaries are put upon them in consequence. And it has an incredible amount of fun while it does so.

After five episodes of foundation-laying that could, if I'm being generous, have been dispatched in two, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina finally kicks into gear. There's a narrative momentum to the season's end that has me looking forward to a much more fully realized, and already ordered, second season.

For as interesting as some of the coven material is, it’s easy--and a little frustrating--to imagine the show “Sabrina” could’ve been if it had embraced the Academy. Many of the scenes that click fully into place involve some combination of Academy students, lore, and protocol that make it feel like such a promising, pitch-black “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” heir that it’s disappointing when the series pulls away. The good news is that once the show pushes past its initial throat clearing, is alluring and compelling enough to discourage looking away.

The rest of this derivative, Netflix-bloated season gave me buyer’s remorse. The saga’s unmistakably Potterized. ... The production design’s a retro fantasia.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is frequently chilling, but it’s rarely much of an adventure.

While the gothic backdrop and juicy performances give "Sabrina" zest, the show feels lacking in the qualities that would distinguish it from "Charmed," or "Legacies," whose ensemble cast includes not just teenage witches but vampires, werewolves and hybrids.

Though the series gets better near the end, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina takes too long to get there, clocking in at a total of 10 roughly one-hour episodes. Characters boringly blather on about the Dark Lord, Father Blackwood (Richard Coyle), the Church of Night, the witches who died back in 1692, the forbidden love of Sabrina’s now-dead parents, and so many coven rules and regulations it sounds like the most restrictive condo board imaginable.

A stylish if juvenile supernatural thriller. I was hoping for more whimsy and wonder--and frankly chills--amid the hocus-pocus, not to mention a bit less mythological mumbo-jumbo. But by the midpoint of the 10-epsiode season, the show finds its stride. [15-28 Oct 2018, p.9]

The two tones--Sabrina behaving as though she’s caught in a teen soap opera; the aunts dithering animatedly--are frequently jarring.