Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, Part 2

In the terms of the show, this is the second part of the first season of Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, though they were released about six months apart. Whatever it wants to call itself, the show has doubled down on its darkness, and I loved it. Not only was it suspenseful--I actually had to look at the spoilers to make sure the characters I liked would be okay--but I was slack-jawed at how blasphemous it was.

As a reminder, Sabrina is a sixteen-year-old half-witch, half-mortal. She is torn between the secular and the world of Satan worshippers. But the show, amazingly, has nothing wrong with being a Satanist. The only Christians we see are murderous witch-hunters, and they go up in hellfire when Sabrina resurrects herself and destroys them. Fun times!

Anyway, Sabrina is being groomed to be the Queen of Hell, serving at the side of Lucifer, and open the gates of Hell so that all witches and mortals will be enslaved. Sabrina doesn't like this, and in one of the best lines of the show yells, "Not today, Satan!"

The show manages to finely balance between camp and genuine horror. There are numerous grisly scenes, involving cannibalism, poisoning, a mouse being run through a grinder, and various murders. Bu there are also winks at the camera. Characters are named Shirley Jackson, Howard Lovecraft, and Dorian Gray (who does have a portrait). I noticed at one breakfast at Sabrina's house a box of "Graveyard Pops" was on the table. I also enjoyed the reappearance of actor William B. Davis, who played Cancer Man on The X-Files.

Kiernan Shipka is Sabrina and she's terrific. The character, as I mentioned in my review of Part 1, can be a pill, but that's the way it should be. Without her defying Satan there would be no show. And I also marvel at the show's progressive attitude about transgender people. Sabrina's friend Susie decides she wants to be called Theo, and starts living as a boy. The actor who plays him is Lachlan Watson, who is a non-binary person (not identifying as masculine or feminine) and refers to themselves in they/them pronouns.

For all these reasons, Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina would make an evangelical go crazy. My sister-in-law doesn't want her children celebrating Halloween or reading Harry Potter books. I can only imagine what she would think of this show, and I smile devilishly when I do.