TV Review: Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022)

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022) created by Guillermo del Toro

This anthology series hosted and created by Guillermo del Toro features eight horror stories selected by del Toro and directed by various others. The title is a reference to the old tradition of having a "cabinet of curiosities" filled with strange and meaningful items from across the world. The stories are set in a variety of times and locations, with different directors and writers for each. Here's the episode by episode rundown....

1. Lot 36--A desperate man (Tim Blake Nelson) works with a storage unit owner (Sebastian Roche) to sell off the goods from abandoned units. The man is quite sour and unfriendly, hoping to make enough money to pay off debts. He's in bad with the criminal element and wants to make a big score. Sifting through the items, he finds some Nazi photographs and an old seance table. He finds a buyer willing to pay handsomely for occult items, but there may be more in the storage unit than they can handle. Nelson gives a good performance but his character is so unlikeable that I vacillated between indifference and happiness when bad things happened to him. He's definitely no hero and he doesn't even make anti-hero status. He's just a jerk in a hard situation who looks like he will get what's coming to him.

2. Graveyard Rats--A desperate man (David Hewlett) is cemetery caretaker in late 1800s Salem, Massachusetts. He digs up the freshly-buried dead to take valuables (jewelry, gold teeth, etc.) and pawn them. He has had trouble lately in the form of rats, who have been stealing the bodies from the coffins! He's in debt with the criminal element and wants to make a big score. At the coroner's, he finds out that a rich man has died. The family wants a fine funeral and to bury him with his sword from King George. The caretaker has to wait till the night after the burial. When he digs open the grave, he discovers the rats dragging off the body. He crawls in after them, leading to a claustrophobic, if not entirely believable, horror. Like in the first episode, the main character has little to recommend him to the viewer, making his problems less sympathetic. The horrible conflict at the end is longer, gorier, and has some jokes. This story struck me like it was a grim fairground house of horrors. I didn't quite enjoy this one either, though it was a definite improvement from the first episode.

3. The Autopsy--A weird mine accident has the local sheriff (Glyn Turman) calling in a medical examiner friend (F. Murray Abraham) to examine the bodies. The insurance does not want to pay benefits to the bereaved families if the cause of death was a bomb exploding in the mine. As the doctor examines the corpses of the dead miners, he starts to put together the very sinister thing that happened. This episode features many very graphic shots of autopsies happening, which was very unpleasant to me and did not add to the story. The ending was interesting but didn't quite justify the hard slog to get to it.

4. The Outside--Homely bank teller Stacie (Kate Micucci) is not with the in-crowd at the bank--the gossipy harpies who are all about their looks and how pathetic their sex lives are. Stacie gets invited to a Secret Santa party where the host gives out "AloGlo," an overpriced skin conditioner that they all swear by. Stacie has an allergic reaction to it but really wants to change. She keeps using it even though it is causing her pain and welts all over. Her husband tries to be supportive but she slips more and more into an unhealthy mindset. I found the show excruciatingly slow and hard to watch, hoping it would end sooner rather than later. The story picks up in weirdness and horror eventually, but too late for me to get any satisfaction from it. I understand and appreciate the story's thematic richness but I just did not enjoy watching it.

5. Pickman's Model--Art student Will (Ben Barnes) at Miskatonic University, Arkham, Massachusetts, falls under the spell of a fellow student, Richard Upton Pickman (Crispin Glover), or at least under the spell of his art. Pickman draws fantastic and horrible things. Will starts seeing fantastic and horrible things in real life. Pickman is rejected by his teachers whom he claims do not understand his art or where it comes from in reality. Will is able to get away from the influence for years, but Pickman returns to Arkham. Will is now on the board of an art gallery. A fellow board member brings a new exhibit, Pickman's works, which dredges up all Will's horrors from the past. The Lovecraft short story this is based on has a much simpler plot while containing the weird and unsettling nature of the art. This show seems more about Will's sensitivity and loss of grip on reality (or is it a deeper, Pickman-like insight into reality?). The show was interesting but not as amazing as the story.

6. Dreams in the Witch House--Rupert Grint stars as a surviving twin whose sister died when they were eight or ten. He's still trying to get her back, because he saw her ghost hauled away into the forrest when she died. He's been part of the Massachusetts Spiritual Society (yes, it's another Lovecraft story) and has been looking for a legitimate mystic to connect him to the afterlife. He is desperate enough to try anything. He's finally drawn to a witch's house as a locus of mystical opportunity. This story was a lot more engaging and well-told. Grint is able to eek a lot of sympathy for his character and the resolution is most satisfying.

7. The Viewing--An eccentric millionaire (Peter Weller) invites four seemingly random people to his isolated home: an astrophysicist, a novelist, a psychic, and a songwriter. All are minorly famous and have been promised to see something amazing. But first, he has to get them ready with the best booze and the finest cocaine, with special enhancements by another scientist. The story moves slowly and weirdly, leaning into the 1970s synth music and stylish visuals reminiscent of Blade Runner. The ending is cryptic and uncertain, as are the characters who manage to survive to the end. 

8. The Murmuring--A middle-aged couple who are ornithologists move to an isolated island to research the birds that flock there. He (Andrew Lincoln) takes pictures and film; she (Essie Davis) records sound and documents the research. Their original plan is to live in tents but the island has an old, abandoned house that has been empty for decades. They have a somewhat frigid relationship with her being tense and detached. Then she starts hearing things on her recording and eventually seeing things in the house. She can't quite bring herself to tell him about it, building up tension as she learns more and more about the mother and child who lived there long ago. This story is completely different from the rest of the series--there's almost no gore and everything is subtle and implied. The actors give very good performances. The story and characters are a bit predictable but in a satisfying way.

After the second episode, I seriously thought about quitting. A lot of the gore looked to me like "gore for its own sake," which is completely uninteresting to me. The first two main characters were basically the same guy, the only meaningful difference being the first is from the 1990s and the second from the 1890s. Del Toro is a favorite of mine, so I stuck it out. The only episodes I really liked and would watch again are "Dreams in the Witch House" and "The Murmuring" (and maybe "The Viewing"). I appreciate some of the other stories without really admiring or enjoying them. Two or three out of eight is not a good ratio.

Not recommended except for the two episodes--one of the problems with anthologies is the mixed nature of the storytelling. I'd probably give another season a chance, though I'd be pretty cautious.

Currently (November 2022), this series is only streaming on Netflix.