Review of "Sabrina's Ice Adventures": Frequent Thrills

The icy adventures of Sabrina is often scary, but it's rarely an adventure. The new version of Netflix on the tradition of Sabrina the teenage witch, with Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men) as our spooky heroine, takes a haunting start, but more than 10 episodes become more painful than they are worth.

When we meet Sabrina Spellman, she carefully spends the days of her calendar, giving her the date she writes "16th Anniversary" and, just below, "Black Baptism". It's hard to be a teenager these days. Or whatever the days Sabrina takes place in: The show presents a retro aesthetic of the 50s, cars crinoline, through the modern sensitivity of feminism, the expression of gender and the costs related to the servant of Satan.

The devil is not limited to details here; he is everywhere, with his slapping hooves and his goat's head, making horrible ravages and sending his servants under torture and compelling Sabrina to queue. But Sabrina does not want to submit to baptism and she does not want to give up her life to the Dark Lord. She wants to stay in the ordinary world, alongside her boyfriend Harvey (Ross Lynch) and bestsellers Roz (Jaz Sinclair) and Susie (Lachlan Watson). Once you have enlisted in Satan's service, you can no longer have idiotic sleep.

Sabrina is half witch, half deadly. His father was a powerful warlock and his mother an ordinary human being. Since their death, Sabrina was raised by her aunts witches (Lucy Davis and Miranda Otto) in a moldy funeral home. They insist that she respects the Spellman family name and gives herself body and soul to the Church of Night.

Like any adolescent hero, Sabrina prefers to do things her way. "I want freedom and power," she pleads. It's a shame, that's all. It's a world of men, and shivering virgin teenagers, kneeling in their white pants, while powerful older men bloody their brow, is the way things are going.

This ritual, with a vulnerable Sabrina who was shaking with fear as he was surrounded by strange wizards, is nothing but a beautiful picture. As in many modern series, the series is often too dark to see what happens. But in the rare moments of illumination (again real), she is as rich as an oil painting, with Shipka almost as brilliant.

The constant mist and the unnatural color palate make Sabrina a dead voice for the impregnated version of CW's murder on Archie comics Riverdale, which is not a surprise. Sabrina's character is part of the larger Archie universe and the two series share the same creator, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. In all the ways that Riverdale turns Archie and the gang into Twin peaks Junior, The icy adventures of Sabrina is more like True blood for teenagers, with a parade of supernatural entities and an over-represented mythology that threatens to melt the joy of narration.

Like most Netflix originals, The icy adventures of Sabrina is the wrong number of episodes. It may have been a short, tense and thrilling series, or an occult procedure like Supernatural. Instead, it's not quite right either, and it burns its most interesting parts while stagnating at its darkest.

Sabrina triumphs bullies, monsters and misogynists, with apples filled with flies that litter her way, but the series becomes repetitive. After a while, determined women shouting Latin incantations while looking at the scowling camera begin to feel like a flow of Harry Potter. The obstacles are too familiar and clear, and no one ever really lives up to Sabrina's director.

When he buzzes, though, Sabrina is an explosion. It's a horror show, with a profusion of demons and a group threatening young witches who dress the same way and move in a hilly herd. He knows what The job knew, who is that teenage rabies is a powerful force.

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The icy adventures of Sabrina is now streaming on Netflix.