CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA production still. Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
All of episode 5
Episode: “Chapter Five: Dreams in a Witch House”
Who would have thought that Netflix would air, as a TV-14 show, a nightmare in which one character must perform an autopsy on his own corpse?
That’s before we get into Zelda sitting in the kitchen with Hilda’s rotting corpse, because the Cain Pit stops working in her nightmare, or Hilda being forcibly stitched to Zelda, who also has her mouth stitched shut, or Sabrina’s nightmare of being trapped in an iron maiden. Finally, the defeat of Batibat involves her being wound up in spider’s silk by plenty of spiders while still alive, and no, there aren’t many cutaways from that, either.
Again, this show is (somehow) rated TV-14.
Sure, the demon looks like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reject of the highest order, but the rest of the episode is horrifying enough that it doesn’t even matter.
The exorcism of Jesse Putnam
Episode: “Chapter Six: An Exorcism in Greendale”
Uncle Jesse’s exorcism, performed by witches who technically have no business doing exorcisms (as noted by Father Blackwood), like the harrowing, has some thorny racial politics as well due to the references to Marie Laveau and Tituba both. It seems fitting to note that before we get any further.
That all being said, the chanting, the roars and screams of the demon, and the visual of said demon once he’s expelled from Jesse? It aptly combines both the gross-out and supernatural subgenres of horror.