So listen. I’m going to start this review a little different. If you were young and your parents would not let you watch the Harry Potter series and you still haven’t seen it, this is not the series for you…AT ALL. If you don’t believe in dark magic, this is not your series. If you are afraid of Ouija boards, blood, dark wizards and the like, THIS IS NOT THE SERIES FOR YOU.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about how this is in no way shape or form like the ABC show of a similar name following the same teen from the same comic, shall we?
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a dark, sinister, have a cross nearby type of series. Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka), half mortal/half witch, is turning 16 on Halloween (real fitting) and on her 16th birthday she has to make a choice, to live her life as a mortal girl or to sign her name in the Dark Book, joining the Church of Night (yeah, I know it sounds weird) and become a full witch. So this 16 year old has to make a life changes decision on her birthday no less. So for y’all out there who can’t decide where to go in your birthday or what kind of cake you should have, you should feel better about your indecisiveness now.
Sabrina has lived her life more so as a mortal than as a witch, even though everyone in her house is a witch or wizard, so as you can imagine, this is a really hard decision for Sabrina to make. Sabrina is also special in the sense that she comes from a mortal woman and the High Priest of the Church of Night, at the time, a union that was unorthodox during that era. Her parents actually had special permission to be together.
The series takes a lot of twists and turns and is very much a show for adults and late teens more so than children. I cannot stress this enough but this is a DARK show. You have to really be a person who is ok with darkness. Not only does the show deal with dark magic, it is also shot very dark. All the scenes are either at night or if it’s in the daytime, it has a dark tone to it. It’s never bright in this show. Adds to the eerieness.
The person who really go everyone’s attention is her cousin Ambrose (Chance Perdomo). Ambrose is fine, hunnie! In the show, he is Sabrina’s guy on her shoulder. She doesn’t have her parents and most times she can’t really talk to her aunts, so she talks to Ambrose. He’s on house arrest for attempting to blow up the Vatican, which you would think he would be rewarded for instead of punished but whatever. I just wanted to make sure I pointed him out because he deserves.
After the initial season, there is (surprise, surprise) Christmas special that is used as a bridge between the former season and the one that is yet to come. The Christmas special was needed because one, we loved the show and wanted more, and two, it answered some other questions we had throughout the season.
Most important to note, this is not a show that you can play in the background. You have to be paying attention to all the things because they all play together. If you miss something, you will be confused. Watch it when you’re awake and if you feel some type of way about the dark, watch it in the daytime. You’ll go down many haunted paths with Sabrina but the show flawlessly incorporates typical teenage issues in the show. Witch or not, we all have had bullies, we all have had to make tough decisions and we have all had to keep something from friends out of fear of hurting them or protecting them. I really enjoy that wands are left out of the series. The magic comes from within and not a wand (no shade to my faves Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts. This is a different beast).
I’m currently catching up but season four is on Netflix now! Each episode is about an hour or so long and more twists and turns are ahead!
BLACK WATCH 