TV: Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities
2022, 8 episode gothic horror anthology on Netflix
The What 100
Each episode of GDT’s Cabinet of Curiosities is a stand-alone tale, most approximately an hour in length, most with a bit of Lovecraftian influence, and directed by some prominent names in modern horror. It’s hard to talk about them as a whole because they are so uniquely their own thing. GDT is taking inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, here, stepping out in front of the camera for a minute before each episode to issue a preamble for the tale and introduce the director (it’s clear he’s proud of the cadre of filmmakers he’s assemble for this).
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Lot 36
dir. Guillermo Navarro
The Plot 100: It’s Bush Sr.’s USA in the early 1990’s and a disgruntled-at-the-world, right-wing talk radio-loving Vietnam veteran (Tim Blake Nelson) buys a storage locker at auction (kind of his side hustle) while unsavoury debt collectors come calling. The heat is on. As he parses through his trove, he discovers some very unusual items, and learns some troubling things about its owner. Turns out the storage locker does contain something very valuable but also extremely dangerous.
1-1-1: (1 Great) In the setting of the story, a damp, dark, dinged up concrete warehouse with chipped-paint garage doors operates its lights on a timed dial setting. Every corner Nelson turns, every room or corridor he enters, requires him to crank a new timer dial. As tensions escalate, this erratic lighting is everything to the mood.
(1 Good) The introduction of the mystery of the storage bay is a lot of fun, especially the VCR-recorded security camera footage revealing the strange ritual its prior owner would do before entering and after leaving, and then the occult weirdos Nelson meets (and barely tolerates) as possible buyers.
(1 Bad) The subplot about the poor Latina woman who’s trying to get her possessions back from Nelson, only to find he has no shred of human compassion or empathy, isn’t a bad one, but I just find it hard to believe she’d just be hanging around the facility for hours and hours on end.
Meta: Navarro was Robert Rodriguez’s cinematographer for years, and then Del Toro’s, before stepping out as a director on his own, primarily doing genre-adjacent pique TV (Narcos, Hannibal, Preacher, Luke Cage among many). This story feels like a classic anthology construct, both in a good and bad way. It’s idea feels like it could carry a longer story, with more of a classic battle against the creature finale, rather than the semi-twist ending (Nelson being undone by his own greed, carelessness and callousness) which doesn’t really resolve the bigger picture.
In the cards: 8 of Hearts
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Graveyard Rats
dir. Vincenzo Natali (Cube)
The Plot 100: In turn of the century…somewhere (it’s all Toronto to me)… Masson (David Hewlett) is the caretaker at a graveyard, but mostly he takes care of himself. He’s got some heavy gambling debts to pay and his graverobbing, of late, has yielded poor returns, mostly because the rats keeps stealing the bodies before he can get at them. One particularly attractive, freshly buried body seems to be the prize to end all prizes, but the rats are ahead of him again. Pulled in after them, he finds himself face to face with ROUSes and also a shrine to something more.
1-1-1: (1 Great) “MINE!” When Masson steals that totem awakening that…thing, it’s cry of “MINE!” is just the greatest takeaway from the series.
(1 Good) The final gag, which I won’t spoil, is pretty good. It’ll make you very squeamish without being gory.
(1 Bad) At 38 minutes, it’s by far the slightest of all the GDTCoC tales, which isn’t bad (I don’t think you could get much more out of this tale), but it does make it stand out as inconsistent with the rest.
Meta: Based on a story by Del Toro (I think the only one of this series), it’s pretty funny, all things told. While the crawling through the tunnels is very effective effect (recalling crawling through the vents in Aliens) it’s intensity is undercut by the tone, which is I think is a pretty light touch on Natali’s part. There is a fair bit of “ewww” it’s not really scary, particularly as its protagonist is not the most sympathetic of characters.
In the cards: 9 of Spades
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The Autopsy
dir. David Prior (The Empty Man)
The Plot 100: A miner hops atop the full elevator cage as it descends into the shaft. When it arrives at its floor, the miner tosses an unknown device that detonates. The town sheriff, trying to piece together the whys and hows of the incident (mainly because insurance is threatening not to pay out to the victims of the families), invites an old coroner friend (who reveals he’s got a terminal illness) to reassess the corpses and try to determine what’s going on. Answers are forthcoming, and it’s up to the coroner to determine what to do with his knowledge.
1-1-1:(1 Great) The story here feels very much like a televised novella. The script by David S. Goyer adapts the short story by Michael Shea, and though I have not read it, I can only assume it’s a literal translation. The story is told in two parts, the first with the Sheriff (Glynn Turman) both catching up and retelling the details of what he knows to his old friend Dr. Winters (F. Murray Abraham). The second half is Dr. Winters conducting his autopsies, talking into his recording device what he observes, until something starts talking back to him. It doesn’t feel like a TV script, or a stage play, or a movie…it feels like a visual narrative, and it’s quite captivating.
(1 Good) Both Turman and Abraham are quite fantastic, both together and individually. I don’t know if they know each other personally but you really get a sense of familiarity between them (in the sense of their characters, there seems both a professional and social friendship between them). Turman has done great work (and an incredible amount of it) including notable turns on The Wire and Fargo season 4, but he’s a welcome presence any time. Abraham has been busy after leaving Mythic Quest, turning up in The White Lotus season 2, Moon Knight as well as here.
(1 Bad) Honestly having a hard time with a “bad” with this. I loved its stripped down nature…I guess what I’m always curious about is the post script…what happened after, but I don’t think even that is needed here.
Meta: This one is so quiet a horror, the terror from elsewhere, but in a way it’s also plays out like a closed room murder mystery, and it’s up to Dr. Winters to effectively solve his own murder. There’s an “action” beat to open up the production, which is such a confusing and perplexing opening that needs to be brought into perspective, but otherwise it’s a pretty steady, measured story, yet the final 10 minutes are so intensely pulse-pounding, so methodical, so disturbing but captivating.
In the cards: Jack of Spades.
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The Outside
dir. Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, The Bad Batch)
The Plot 100: It’s the mid-80’s(ish) and bank teller Stacey is constantly reminded by her co-workers how much she’s not like them. She doesn’t think about the sex things they think about, she doesn’t talk the gossip they talk about, and she doesn’t look like them with their push-up bras, high hair and perfect make-up. Their secret: Alo-Glo, but when Stacy tries it, she breaks out in a rash. Her husband Keith is worried but tries to be supportive when she continues to use it, the rash spreading, spurred on by the Alo-Glo pitch man on TV talking directly to her.
1-1-1: (1 Great) Dan Stevens (Legion, Beauty and the Beast) as the Alo-Glo pitchman. Holy shit, whatever he’s doing, I didn’t want him to stop. Between this and his Russian in Euro-Vision, Stevens has become the master of outrrrrageeeeous accents. My buddy Toast pins this as a mix of European and Southern…I would even throw in a bit of Matt Berry-esque inflection with some Scandanavian influence. Whatever it is, it worked for me.
(1 Good) Kate Micucci (Garfunkle & Oates, Scrubs) very brave, very restrained performance here. It takes a real lack of ego allow the make-up team to do what they did to here in this (not just all the blotchiness, but the lazy eye, the teeth, the mullet). While it is a tale told lightly, with much absurdity, Micucci never is playing anything comically. The empathy, even as her obsessiveness with transformation grows, is never lost. The very end here shares, by sheer happenstance, a similar moment to Ty West’s Pearl. It’s effective in both cases, but I think that it’s now got to be retired from cinema as a concept.
(1 Bad) [Spoiler-ish] While this story really entertained me, and worked for me almost in total, I really was expecting this to wind up with a doppleganger situation and that was just a little disappointing. Also, there’s no sense of the larger world here, what the pervasiveness of Alo-Glo is and the effect it’s having outside of Stacy’s small circle.
Meta: I watched both A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and The Bad Batch in 2022 and was really engaged by Amirpour’s unique slurry of influences and their impact on her storytelling and filmmaking. This is based on a short story (by Emily Carroll) with screenwriters other than Amirpour, but she makes it her own, quite assuredly. Is it scary? Almost not at all. But is it horror, and I would say it most definitely is. The discomfort within her own skin that Stacy feels day in and day out is only made worse with the promise of change. It’s also a Christmas story, and it feels kind of Gremlins-esque.
In the cards: Queen of Diamonds
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Pickman’s Model
dir. Keith Thomas (Firestarter, The Vigil)
The Plot 100: It’s the early 1900s and art student Will has become rather accomplished in and outside of his university, but when a new student arrives, his work both fascinates and disturbs Will intensely, and it threatens to ruin his otherwise happy life. 15 years later Will has long since shaken the influence, but when the artist and his work turn up in his life again, seemingly with an agenda, Will’s sanity slowly shatters, and everything he has is in danger of collapsing.
1-1-1: (1 Great) I think Thomas absolutely nailed the tone, effectively capturing Thurber’s (Ben Barnes, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) descent into madness in a Lovecraft fashion.
(1 Good) I’m still deciding if Crispin Glover’s very, very weird performance as the titular Pickman is effective or distracting. I don’t know whether that Massachusetts(?) accent he does is a real accent at.all, but you can’t ever say that Glover is boring to watch on screen.
(1 Bad) Toronto isn’t that old of a city so there’s not really a lot of turn-of-the-century locations to film in, so it does like we’re recycling locations we already used in Graveyard Rats. Where Rats mostly captured the era it was inhabiting with a natural sensibility, here there’s a manufactured turn-of-the-century that feels too glossy, like Murdock Mysteries.
Meta: This is one of two tales directly adapted from Lovecraft. I have read only a few bits of Lovecraft works, and I’m not really a fan. The tone and sensibilities that Lovecraft pioneered, and the derivative works that have come from it, are the legacy. His own work I find frequently tedious, ugly and offensive (he was notoriously racist within and outside of his work). So this adapted story is more on the tedious side, with thin characters, and an expected progression that offered no surprises or delights. I struggled with my 1-1-1 to really say anything positive.
In the cards: 3 of Clubs
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Dreams in the Witch House
dir. Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown, Twilight)
The Plot 100: Pre-1900, young Walter witnesses his sister’s death, only to see her spirit emerge, then promptly be dragged away into a nightmare forest. Decades later, Walter works for a paranormal investigation society, but it’s a field of study rapidly declining in status. Walter happens upon a stranger who gives him Liquid Gold that takes him to the forest to visit his sister, but the encounter not only doesn’t find him peace but he disturbs something that echoes back into his own life. As his quality of life degrades, he makes some very questionable choices in his quest to free his sister.
1-1-1: (1 Great) There’s a moment where Walter encounters his sister, and he tells her she hasn’t changed a bit, while she tells him he’s gotten older. Though worried about what his presence in the tenuously stable purgatory in which she lives means, she’s happy to see him and asks him about his life, about whether he became the great musician he always wanted to be. Walter covers up the fact that he’s effectively wasted living obsessing about death.
(1 Good) I think Hardwicke absolutely nailed the tone, effectively capturing Walter (Rupert Grint, Harry Potter and the…) descent into madness in a Lovecraft fashion. Okay, okay, it’s not a descent into madness so much as an acceleration of obsession. But, she effectively sets a mood, and as the story twists itself into different spaces, that mood shifts beautifully into different intensities.
(1 Bad) That dumb rat with the human face (DJ Qualls, Hustle & Flow) was just ridiculous. I think it was intended to be creepy but, with the exception of its very first, shrouded appearance, it destroyed the mood of every scene it was in, and ultimately the end of the story revolves around it to a groan-inducing degree.
Meta: This is the second Lovecraft adaptation, and it’s a less boring endeavour than Pickman’s Model with Hardwicke and screenwriter Mika Watkins finding something to say about how people get lost in obsession. The production values are top notch.
In the cards: 7 of Hearts
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The Viewing
dir. Panos Cosmatos (Mandy, Beyond the Black Rainbow)
The Plot 100: It’s the late-70’s. An anonymous astrophysicist, a famous novelist, a famous record producer, and a famous mentalist assemble, confused, in a parking garage. A very 70’s windowless van picks them up and takes them to their destination, a concrete compound where a notorious recluse lives. They’re invited to indulge in the finest drinks and drugs and most exclusive music with their host before they’re to be shown something he hopes they, with their very different and elite perspectives, can provide some insight upon. Here’s a hint: they can’t.
1-1-1: (1 Great) Cosmatos has a very distinctive style, which is trying to recreate the feeling of early 1980s direct-to-video horror movie tape covers, but as a whole film. This (like his other works) has mood for days. The shot-on-tape graininess, the levers, dials and consoles, the art direction and lighting, sets and wardrobe all operating in concert to make something new that feels like a relic of another time, to give that viewing experience of discovering something lost. It’s friggin’ delightful.
(1 Good) That “What a Fool Believes” music cue. I’m not saying a Doobie bounce is ever unwelcome, but this is one of the most perfect uses of it. That’s yacht!
(1 Bad) While I didn’t want this to end (and I think there could have been more to it) it also strangely sagged in the middle, a bit of “get on with it”. But when they get on with it, hoo boy. Magic
Meta: I’m in the pocket for what Cosmatos is selling here. Half of its starring roles are comedic performers (Charlyne Yi, Eric Andre and Steve Agee) so there’s no surprise that this film kind of has it’s tongue digging around its cheek quite often. But Cosmatos balances the humour with a pervasive ominousness and, yeah, moooood. The soundtrack (highlighted often by the characters) from Daniel Lopatin is largely atmospheric moog sounds (in story played off 8-track tapes, and commissioned exclusively for Peter Weller’s completely custom home). The script is the only one of two in this series to be written by the director, and in this case I have to wonder if Cosmatos’ adherence to early-80’s low-budget horror includes banal conversation and cheesy, expository exclamations. It doesn’t not work, regardless.
In the cards: Jack of Hearts
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The Murmuring
dir. Jennifer Kent (The Babadook)
The Plot 100: It’s the pre-war 30’s and Nancy and Edgar are vaunted ornithologists (though Edgar garnering most of the respect of their male-dominated society) heading to a secluded isle in Nova Scotia to study a mostly unresearched species. While there, they take up residence in an abandoned, yet fully furnished home, far more comfortable than the tents they planned on staying in. The loss of their daughter looms over their relationship, and Nancy becomes more and more withdrawn from Edgar, especially when she starts hearing and seeing things she can’t explain, and Edgar doesn’t understand.
1-1-1: (1 Great) Kent (no relation) delivers a very compassionate, empathetic story that really has no adversary, except one’s own emotions. She delivers a story where Nancy is our POV character, but it doesn’t lose sight or awareness of Edgar as her partner in life and love. Edgar was hoping the trip, the seclusion, the work would allow them to escape the grief, the spectre of loss, and bring them back together, but every effort to get closer to Nancy is rebuffed, more sternly, more coldly with each more reluctant advance. He’s never a threat, he’s just confused. Kent paints him as a man who loves and respects his wife and wants more than anything else to go through this together, to lean on her, and have her lean on him. My heart was pained watching Essie Davis (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, The Babadook) and Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead) very soulfully work through this story.
(1 Good) The haunting was such a side story in all of this, and yet it was perfectly represented, timed expertly, and having emotional relevance to everything going on. It may not be jump-scare scary, it does have an unsettling resonance if you’re investing in this expertly paced story Kent is telling.
(1 Bad) The bird theme I loved, and I think somewhere in this story there was meant to be more thematic resonance to the bird, the habits of birds and whatnot as they relate to the emotional state of the characters or if there’s some lore or mythology around birds and death or souls or something. But once the horror element starts, and Nancy gets more and more fraught, the birds start to lose relevance.
Meta: I didn’t love The Babadook, but I think a re-assessment is in order. This was masterful, with a stunningly raw performance from Davis, and Lincoln there to support her every step of the way. I’m not going to mince words, I loved this and I think most everything worked so incredibly well. I even had to watch it in three different sittings due to various interruptions and each time Kent got drew me right back into the tone of the piece, and quickly. That said, I was concerned that sometimes the bird flocks were digital and fake, and yet, the flight patterns of birds, like the ones they’re studying, are so mysterious that they may well be real and just look uncannily fake. I dunno. But it’s a beautiful short film that could have easily had another 20 minutes of birds, and mood, and maybe a few more scares to make a great feature.
In the cards: Queen of Clubs
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