Cabinet of curiosities by Guillermo del Toro brings the brand director and Netflix money to a somewhat dusty genre, the horror anthology, and seeks to give it a new lease of life just before Halloween. The streaming service says del Toro “personally curated” the eight stories, all of which are available now, but he didn’t direct any of them himself, contracting out the likes of Jennifer Kent (The Babadook), Vincenzo Natali (cube, Splice), and Ana Lily Amirpour (A girl walks home alone at night). The roughly hour-long installments — many of which are based on short stories by HP Lovecraft or del Toro himself — vary wildly in their chosen horrors, tone, and, I’m sorry to say, quality. Luckily, they don’t have to be watched together either, or in any particular order, so you’re free to choose. Accordingly, here’s a guide to which episodes are actually worth watching and, borrowing from Slate’s patented Scaredy Scale, a bonus subjective rating for which are best suited for the wimps among us. The episodes are listed in rough order of preference, from best to worst.
1. “The Autopsy”, episode 3
David Prior (from horror nerds new favorite The empty man) features another strange mix of genres in this story of a man who disappears one night while hiking during a meteor shower, then reappears with a mysterious object that he brings into the mine shaft where he works , to blow everyone up. And that’s just the setup! We follow an interwoven story centered around a doctor (F. Murray Abraham) who arrives to perform the titular task on dead miners. I won’t say more, except that while I can’t attest that this episode makes sense, hoo boy is that creepy.
Fear Scale: 7/10. I say this with love, but this is one of the most disgusting hours of television I have ever seen. Had this been subject to our individual ratings on the Scaredy scale, the gore would be 10/10. God. And it doesn’t skimp black mirror-neither psychological horror levels. Strictly for degenerates.
2. “The Pickman Model”, episode 5
One of the adaptations of Lovecraft, director Keith Thomas (The Vigil), this one has an unfair advantage in that it casts Crispin Glover as the main antagonist, a painter haunted by gruesome Gothic imagery who makes a grim impression on a fellow art student (Ben Barnes). Years later, the men reunite and the painting-induced hallucinations the fellow student saw when he was younger have become all too real.
Fear Scale: 6/10. One of the more traditionally horror-focused episodes, with creepy motion effects, jump scares, and more. In my eyes, the gore is more movie-loving magic than downright disgusting, but if you don’t like gaping eye sockets or you’re a new parent, maybe skip it.
3. “The viewing”, episode 7
Perhaps the biggest WTF in the collection brings together a group of highly successful artists and scientists (including Eric André, Charlyne Yi and Steve Agee) at the behest of a deep-pocketed mystery man (Peter Weller), who keep playing with expensive scotch, weed, and Peruvian cocaine, all leading up to a finale that I can pretty much guarantee you won’t see coming. We imagine at least some of these substances taken into account in the realization of this very strange but quite amusing hour.
Fear Scale: 5/10. It’s hard to say more without revealing the episode, but in the last 15 minutes the host’s intentions become clear and someone watched the end of The Raiders of the Lost Ark.
4. “Whispers”, episode 8
Two married birdwatchers who suffered a terrible loss a year earlier travel to a house on a remote island to survey the local bird population. Guess what?? The people who lived in the house also suffered a terrible loss – and they never left! No surprises from Jennifer Kent, of Babadook infamy, the episode has the finest craftsmanship of the bunch, even though it’s mostly a numbers-based ghost story about maternal grief.
Fear scale: 5/10. No surprise either, this one has classic haunted house scares, and the dead (and indeed, whispering) kids will surely be too much for some. But it’s relatively mild, after all.
5. “Lot 36”, episode 1
An early sign of this series’ half-baked ambitions for social relevance, the episode (directed by Guillermo Navarro, a frequent cinematographer for del Toro) follows a broke, xenophobic American veteran (Tim Blake Nelson) who buys auction storage units. One unit apparently belonged to a man who did “terrible things” for the Nazis, and inside the man discovers creepy old volumes and a fake door he really shouldn’t have opened. A passable entry.
Fear scale: 5/10. Creepy creepy creature being punished for bad behavior.
6. “Graveyard Rats”, episode 2
Sci-fi horror director Vincenzo Natali tells us the rather goofy story of a tomb robber with a phobia of rats (tough combo!) who goes for his biggest score yet and comes to regret it, in a subterranean adventure of growing terrors. Charming practical effects go a long way.
Fear Scale: 5/10. Slate has long had an internal debate over the question: If you had a choice between falling into a pit full of rats or getting rained down by rats from above, which would you choose? Let’s just say that this episode offers a dramatization of both scenarios.
7. “Dreams in the Witch’s House”, Episode 6
Another Lovecraft adaptation, this time from director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Dusk), follows a man (Rupert Grint, of Harry Potter fame) groping for the supernatural to find his sister, who died when they were young and was taken away by mysterious spirits. He ends up at the titular witch house, where nothing good is happening. The episode plays like a richly crafted homage to del Toro, at the sweetest end of his dark fairy tales. It is, in a nutshell, meh.
Fear scale: 4/10. There’s plenty of witchcraft procedurals, child-snatching trees, and terrible indignities against poor Ron Weasley via a humanoid rodent, but it’s all pretty PG-13.
8. “Outside”, episode 4
In what for me was the big disappointment of the series, a quirky bank teller (Kate Micucci) is convinced by her nauseous colleagues that she needs to experience the world like a conventionally beautiful person. When one of them presents him with a strange body cream – sold by an infomercial ghoul (Dan Stevens) – a painstaking body horror odyssey unfolds. Director Ana Lily Amirpour has all the pieces in place and delivers some depraved sequences in style, but the rest is (sorry!) pretty deep.
Fear Scale: 4/10. It’s, again, disgusting, and skincare nightmares abound, but it’s more unpleasant than haunted.
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