If you’re anything like me, you remember those lazy days in elementary school watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch with your siblings or friends and your favorite character was hands down the talking cat, Salem.
This show felt mature for our age as it aired from 1996-2003, but reruns lasted for years after. As a ten-year-old, this show featuring a teenage-witch going through high school and onto college made this grade school kid feel especially “cool.” I remember enjoying watching my sister compare her school life to the relatable issues Sabrina went through, except she had special powers to help her through it all (sorry sis).
Sabrina the Teenage Witch, based off of a comic, always gave me a certain Cinderella-story feel, as her parents passed when she was younger and she now lives with her wacky aunts (who by the way, are 500 years old). Her aunts are much sweeter to her than the step-mother and sisters of Cinderella, but she still is thrown into a life and past she only knows through the stories of her aunts.
We all know and love this show (and if you don’t go watch it immediately on Hulu, or Amazon Prime). But Netflix has recently added their rendition of the story, a much creepier one I may add. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, (also based off of a comic book) is already telling of the darker differences.
This Netflix show offers the same set up as the well-loved original, but focuses more on Sabrina’s choice between the dark and light world. She is caught between her aunts’ ideas, her own life in normal school, and the evil witches that attempt to keep a mixed mortal/witch out of their pure blood magic school.
Sabrina wrestles with these swirling ideas as well as her past and current relationships with her family and friends and what they mean to her. Through these choices, there are some very *chilling* scenes that offer creep, gore, and the scary moments we seek this Halloween.
Personally, I was pretty enamoured by the show and found myself replaying scenes to better understand the plot and keep up with the many intertwining storylines. Although I’m a sucker for the ABC Family (Freeform?) original, this Netflix show spins the classic, comedic narrative into an even more mature show (I’d say at least PG-13, even “cooler”!). The Netflix version of this series has a thicker plot than the one originally put forth by the TV series, with a darker take on the adventures of Sabrina. While the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch is primarily a comedy, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has deep-rooted horror film aspects complete with blood, murder, and a side of dark witch voodoo.
This new Sabrina theme offers a scary aspect that includes humor, a love-story, and a fantasy-sci-fi combo that does the original comedy a chilling justice.