Believe It or Not, ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ Is the Next Great Teen Drama

Forgive me, Lucy Hale, for I have sinned. Let me confess as my first act of contrition: I’ve only ever seen bits and pieces of the original Pretty Little Liars.

In my formative days, the ABC Family (and, by the time the show ended in 2017, Freeform) teen soap never infiltrated my own little, ridiculous pop-culture universe, aside from a few minutes here and there while channel surfing. Why linger when I could flip one channel back and see whatever crock The CW had in store for me that night? I wouldn’t dare miss a chance to see Jenny Humphrey’s eyeshadow creep back further onto her forehead.

But I’ve always been ashamed! Over the years, my love for pulpy teen dramas has only grown, and the PLL universe has been my irreparable blind spot; the original series had 160 episodes—that’s not even considering the two other short-lived, in-universe spinoffs that have popped up since—it’s just too daunting. So when I heard that the fourth series in the Pretty Little Liars universe would be a mostly standalone reboot, I knew my time had come.

Aside from being just a reboot, HBO Max’s Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin also retools the show’s format from an overblown teen mystery drama into a straight-up teen horror slasher. If you know anything about the original series, you’ll understand the players and the construction of its antagonists, but it’s not necessary to have seen a single frame of any Pretty Little Liars iteration that has come before to enjoy this. And as a now-confessed PLL newbie myself, I relished the chance to dive in without a 10-hour YouTube explainer.

Set in the tiny Pennsylvania town of Millwood, Original Sin follows a group of five high school girls—Imogen (Bailee Madison), Noa (Maia Reficco), Tabby (Chandler Kinney), Faran (Zaria), and Mouse (Malia Pyles)—brought together in detention after seemingly being framed by their school’s most formidable bully, Karen (Mallory Bechtel). Yes, that name choice does seem intentional, but that moment of cringe passes quickly.

The girls decide that Karen’s suspected series of increasingly gruesome attacks deserve a revenge plan that’s just as vicious. But when things start going awry, the Liars realize it may not be Karen who’s after them, but a mysterious, masked assailant known only as “A.”

Of course, a version of “A” was present in the original series as well, but this isn’t your high school bestie’s Pretty Little Liars, oh no.

For starters, television’s a different game than it was 12 years ago. Teen dramas used to be given 22-episode season orders, stretching their plots so thin that you could see the holes forming from a mile away. But the show’s move to HBO Max means a slashed episode order keeps things moving—it also means that this new set of Liars can curse just as much as any normal high-schooler would. There can also be nudity, grisly deaths, and both figurative and literal backstabbing. Just like real-life high school!

Once they’ve formed their clique, the girls band together to figure out why they’re being targeted by “A.” They will need to fight through the remaining nine episodes if they have any chance of making it to graduation, or, at the very least, prom night. Complicating things is a cryptic event from 22 years prior, when their parents were attending Millwood High. The Class of ’99 has a devout tight-lipped policy, causing the Liars to realize that even the smallest towns have the biggest secrets.

HBO Max’s ‘Pretty Little Liars’ Spin-Off Actually Looks So Scary

Original Sin’s blend of mystery and horror is done surprisingly well. A series of stylistic homages to classic slasher flicks sets the exact-right tone. In the first episode alone, references to The Shining and Halloween imbue the show with a welcome eeriness without being so overt that they become obnoxious. I was particularly thrilled to see a couple of creepy split diopter shots, one that took place during a ballet class which seemed like a direct nod to Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake.

All that being said, even with all of the welcome injections of horror, this is very much still a teen soap. Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is most enjoyable when you don’t think too much about the logistics of the shenanigans. Sure, I was dazzled by that ballet class sequence, but a high school ballet elective? In this economy of massive public school arts cuts? Make that make sense!

But as soon as I put my judgment back in the pot of Pretty Little Liars soup and set it to boil, I was right back in.

It becomes difficult, then, to refrain from comparing Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin to the Gossip Girl reboot, also an HBO Max affair. With Warner Media plucking these beloved teen dramas from network television and moving them to streaming, all anyone wanted was a little more grit.

Where Gossip Girl largely failed to do anything but water down the campiness of the original series by purposely removing slut-shaming, catfights, and wicked little digs—you know, all of the things we watch these shows for—Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin goes all-in on its premium platform pleasures.

Original Sin understands that just because audiences enjoy watching teenagers be bad people doesn’t mean that they endorse those behaviors. The series wades into the muck of petty digs and gasp-inducing comebacks because it knows that those things are precisely why we’re here. We don’t want good core values and easily resolved fallouts, shows where the only plot progressions come from picking different characters out of a hat and throwing them into bed together. We want dialogue and drama that quite literally make us say, “OOP!”

So, of course, I was beyond thrilled to hear characters throwing casual slut-shaming and homophobia as if they were as common as “hello” and “goodbye.” It has been too long since I’ve heard a decent, lowdown dig like, “Nobody wants your pregnant, tragic ass here,” or, “No need to come out of the closet, rodent, we already know.” And that’s not even considering the exquisite blowup Karen has at a pizza parlor in the first episode. I won’t spoil it for you, but my jaw (finally!) literally dropped. Is it woke? No. Have a sense of humor!

Even though the series holds tight to the teen drama that makes the genre so watchable, it stumbles a bit when trying to also depict the Extremely Online culture of 2022. Occasionally, a character will deliver a line in complete Twitter Speak that makes me want to crawl out of my skin. When someone asks, “Seriously, how has Karen not been canceled yet?” I nearly withered away.

On the other hand, it’s also a pure delight to watch racist, homophobic, and ableist football jocks get their karmic return courtesy of what looks like a walking scarecrow with a burnt-up Leatherface mask.

Yes, the “A” of Original Sin is legitimately creepy and definitely lethal. Pitting the Liars against this villain is intense, especially in a thrilling apartment complex chase scene. Modern slasher films have all but done away with the cleverly-plotted chase in favor of too many jump scares, so it’s nice to get some classic flavor in this contemporary twist—and on television, no less!

The show does veer left when trying to give us too much of a good thing, though. The horror and film references packed into Original Sin can sometimes be exhausting. In one five-minute stretch, we’re clobbered with hamfisted nods to It, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and even Lady Bird. I wondered if these scripts are how I sound as an entertainment critic just trying to make conversation in everyday life?

Yet, to its credit, the series also understands how obnoxious that can be. After one of the Liars makes her umpteenth horror reference, another rolls her eyes. “Greeeeeat, thanks for moviesplaining that to me.” That one little joke is the perfect distillation of how well this show can work when it effectively combines modern slang with blatant horror influences, sending them up with spicy teenage haughtiness.

Where the Gossip Girl reboot tried to make a needlessly woke teen soap and this year’s Scream revival tried to weave those same hamfisted social considerations with horror, who thought it would’ve been the fourth(!) Pretty Little Liars series that succeeds the most in how it depicts the (sometimes literal) hellscape of being a modern teenager?

Like anything sinful, the series is fleeting, a little immoral, and oh so delicious.

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