No one is bitter about a good horror story, but if there are eight in one go, much better. This is precisely what he has given us. William of the Bull in his anthology ‘Guillermo del Toro’s cabinet of curiosities’ —excuse the redundancy; an irregular compendium in terms of effectiveness, like all the productions of this cut, but tremendously attractive, brave and stimulating for fans of the genre.
Don’t let the terror stop
If you also enjoyed the stories of Panos Cosmatos, Vincenzo Natali, Ana-Lily Amirpour and company on Netflix, you are in luck, because the Mexican filmmaker already has his sights set on a second collection of stories with which he will continue doing what he has been putting into practice since the beginning of his career: supporting the horror community.
This is how he told it in a interview with the medium Indiewire.
“My entire career, even in its early days, has revolved around supporting the community, so I was able to help Jorge Gutierrez with ‘La llorona’, Andy Muschietti with ‘Mamá’ or Juan Antonio Bayona with ‘El orfanato’ . But with an anthology you can support eight filmmakers at once. We created a scenario where we basically said, look, you have complete control. Even if you disagree with me, you may disagree, but I’m going to give you all the support possible so that you can create in an hour and under ideal conditions. I enjoy that role because some filmmakers had less than optimal experiences, others were unknown to some degree. Look, I’m 58 years old and I have a career of 30. It’s a miracle that you can endure three decades as a storyteller. If I can do something to pave the way for a new variation of the genre, I like it.”
In addition, del Toro has begun to give clues about who they will be the directors and directors who will be behind the cameras in the new ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’.
“I have a list. For example, we tried to get Jayro Bustamante and we couldn’t because of COVID. When you think about Mexican filmmakers, there’s Isaa Lopez. She was going to direct one of the episodes and she got ‘True Detective,’ so she couldn’t do it. Boots Riley wrote and was going to direct an episode and got her show greenlit. I could gut the whole second season, but I’m not going to.”
Although there is one name that the Mexican stands out from the rest. This is none other than Larry Fessenden, a horror regular indie North American that surprised in 1995 with his remarkable ‘Habit’ and that has produced gems such as ‘La casa del diablo’ or ‘Stakeland’.
“Larry Fessenden is 100 percent at the top of my list for a second season. Larry is one of those names I fought for to get nominated at the Spirit Awards for ‘Habit,’ which is phenomenal. I’ve been in contact with him ever since. We were very close to doing a remake of ‘The Orphanage.'”
To finish, the master of ceremonies clarifies what role would you like to have in the following season.
“I’d like to write the first and last story for the next season and leave the middle block to others. What I do is curate stories that haven’t been done that could work well with the director. For example, ‘The Autopsy’ was a story praised by horror readers but was unknown and considered inadaptable. So I said, let’s adapt it.”