Guillermo del Toro effusively loves all things ghoulish, grotesque, and squishy—not to mention that he has a particular fondness for dank subterranean locales and slimy tentacled beasts. Thus, he proves the perfect MC for Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, an eight-part Netflix anthology (Oct. 25) that brings together some of horror’s finest artists for a series of superior macabre tales. Ideally fit for the Halloween season, this collection of original and adapted stories doesn’t feature a single dud, delivering frights, heartache and insanity in excitingly surprising fashion. So electric and inspired are these hour-long episodes that you’ll wish there were twenty more on the way.
Channeling the spirt of everything from Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Night Gallery to Tales from the Crypt and Masters of Horror, Cabinet of Curiosities is a gold mine for scary-cinema aficionados, offering up a handful of shorts tethered together by themes of grief and loss, greed and hubris, and ambition and curiosity—almost all of which land their protagonists in otherworldly trouble. In many respects, these unrelated chapters traverse similar terrain, focusing on rats, corpses, cemeteries, autopsies, relics, rituals, séances, dim passageways, and grotesque ghouls that cry out from the great beyond. Still, despite those shared elements, there isn’t a repetitive one in the bunch; courtesy of its accomplished directorial lineup, the series is at once cohesive and diverse, tilling familiar soil in order to unearth a bounty of uncanny riches.
That’s most literally true with regards to “Graveyard Rats,” Vincenzo Natali’s adaptation of Henry Kuttner’s saga of a cemetery caretaker (David Hewlett) who steals the dead’s valuables as a means of paying off his sizable debts. For his troubles, he winds up in a network of buried tunnels populated not only by swarms of hungry rodents but their gigantic mother—as well as an additional undead adversary. Natali’s entry is at once creepy and devilishly comical, and that balancing act is duplicated by a few of its compatriots, such as Ana Lily Amirpour’s “The Outside,” in which a homely bank teller (Kate Micucci) attempts to fit in with her superficially glamorous—if fundamentally rotten and gossipy—coworkers by using a mail-order lotion peddled, supernaturally, by Dan Stevens’ TV huckster. Both elicit a bleak brand of laughter, as does Tim Blake Nelson as a gruffly racist storage-unit scavenger who purchases more than he bargained for in Guillermo Navarro’s excellently unhinged “Lot 36.”
Navarro’s installment culminates with a monstrous vision indebted to H.P. Lovecraft, and that famed author also provides the source material for two Cabinet of Curiosities episodes: Keith Thomas’ “Pickman’s Model” and Catherine Hardwicke’s “Dreams in the Witch House.” In the former, Ben Barnes’ artist becomes entranced by, and then terrified of, the paintings of Crispin Glover’s mysterious stranger, who turns out to have a malignant family history and a keen insight into the darkest corners of reality. Thomas’ contribution benefits from an excellent Glover and Barnes, while Hardwicke’s thrives courtesy of Rupert Grint as a young man—and member of a spiritual society—who’s obsessed with accessing the afterlife so he can reunite with his dearly departed sister. This is, as one might expect, a foolhardy mission that involves moving into the home of a witch, and it soon puts him in the crosshairs of that wicked being and her gnarly rat-like minion.
As if those weren’t enough to make Cabinet of Curiosities a success, del Toro orchestrates a reunion between The Babadook director Jennifer Kent and star Essie Davis (along with The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln) for “The Murmuring,” about an ornithologist couple whose groundbreaking study of dunlins—and their beguiling (telepathic?) flocking instincts—takes them to a remote seaside house where they’re forced, by weeping and screaming specters, to confront the tragic cause of their own estrangement. Kent generates unease, intrigue, and pathos in equal measure, thanks in large part to Davis’ strikingly moving performance as a traumatized woman wrestling with the spirits that haunt her residence and, more pressingly, the sorrow that plagues her working days and sleepless nights.
All of them introduced by del Toro (alongside a literal version of the title object), Cabinet of Curiosities’ episodes are models of economy, establishing tone, character and menace without a single wasted gesture. Whereas most horror anthologies are often narratively and aesthetically scattershot, del Toro’s compendium exhibits just the right amount of grim unity. Nonetheless, there remain two standouts, one of which hews far closer to the production’s general template than the other. That would be David Price’s “The Autopsy,” an unnerving nightmare about a pathologist (F. Murray Abraham) who’s invited by his old sheriff friend (Glynn Turman) to inspect the bodies of men who perished in a mine accident. The cause of this underground calamity has to do with the stars, and its revelations are as unnerving as its atmosphere is eerie; as he did with his big-screen debut The Empty Man, Prior conjures up a mood of inexplicable dread by tapping into strains of beyond-the-veil malevolence.
Best of all, however, is “The Viewing,” the bonkers brainchild of director Panos Cosmatos, who—partnering with screenwriter Aaron Stewart-Ahn—dives headfirst into unfathomable madness with the 1979-set story of a scientist (Charlyne Yi), an author (Steve Agee) and a music producer (Eric André) who are summoned to the home of an enigmatic billionaire (Peter Weller), which he shares with his syringe-adept doctor (Sofia Boutella). The reason for this gathering is as puzzling as Cosmatos’ stewardship is sinister; his dreamy fades, entrancing slow-motion, and silky zooms go a long way toward heightening the air of unearthly terror. Boasting the strange, synth-drenched ’70s-sci-fi décor and vibe of his prior Beyond the Black Rainbow and Mandy, it’s a head-trip that slowly builds to the sort of crazy climax that would make David Cronenberg (or Lovecraft, for that matter) beam with pride.
With its stand-alone segments running no longer than an hour and energized by some of horror’s brightest talents (both in front of and behind the camera), Cabinet of Curiosities is the ideal autumnal streaming release. If Netflix was smart, it would immediately renew del Toro’s series for five more seasons.
