‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities’ (Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, 2022) is the long-awaited series from the director of ‘Hellboy’ (2004), whose name is already one of the most powerful brands in the horror business, although here he has not directed any of the eight medium-length films in the Netflix anthology, which opens the week before Halloween from Tuesday to Friday, with a couple of chapters each night, in an unprecedented strategy on the platform.
However, it is del Toro who is the major creative force behind the whole concept. He has taken it upon himself to recruit the writers and directors, and the series shows clear signs of specific healing, not only because of the filmmakers chosen, but because of the simple moral themes they harbor, their baroque level of production and a literary bent and classical lookwhich to a certain extent is unprecedented in the work of an author who is always more focused on more magical and tragic aspects than on the sensation of fear itself.
A great return to the classic anthologies of vintage flavor
His hand is also noticeable throughout the visual aspect. As is his microanthology ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’, dark photography predominates, meticulously constructed settings and latex creations that display macabre craftsmanship. Most episodes incorporate some creature that is, at least in part, a real, well-crafted construct in the style that del Toro has deployed in his own films.
It is not very different in intentions from the ‘Creepshow’ series, with the difference that, although the practical monsters there are great, they are a bit orphaned by a very, very poor production. Like the Greg Nicotero series, we have a host to introduce us to each story. But instead of a monster, like Rod Serling and Alfred Hitchcockdel Toro briefly introduces each of the segments, opening the doors and drawers of the title cabinet and pulling out objects that reflect the themes of the episodevery much in the style of ‘Night Gallery’, or ‘Friday the 13th: the series’ and its museum of cursed objects.
The concerns of each episode well reflect the spirit of the series as a whole, with period pieces, a classic literary feel, plenty of visual flair, and a narrative that doesn’t leave much room for surprises. The stories are as simple as those in EC comics or the ‘Thriller’ seriesbased on stories of somewhat more modern horror literature, but with tendencies, of weird fiction and, for the most part, very Lovecraftian, regardless of the fact that there are two of the eight that are direct adaptations by the author of Providence.
Episode 1: Storage Room 36
Each night has a theme together. The first features two stories that wrap around the ‘Scavengers’ theme, and the double bill begins with ‘The storage room 36‘ (Lot 36) of William Navarro, Del Toro’s longtime collaborator, who worked as cinematographer on ‘Cronos’ (1993) and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006), from a screenplay by Regina Corrado based on an original story by the creator of both films . In her Tim Blake Nelson is a Vietnam veteran pissed off with the world in full 90 of the invasion of Iraq.
Nostalgic for the Reagan era, he comes across as one of the early adopters of the white replacement theory, who keeps tinkering with storage spaces for the dead. As if it were a dark version of the program ‘Who gives more?’ (Storage Wars), the story the protagonist discovers a dark secret in a unit he won at auction, a seance table with several neat compartments that house a pile of ancient texts, which of course will not lead to anything good.
Being the first, it is an intelligent and very simple introduction to the type of stories that we are going to see, a direct narrative with a mystery that slowly unfolds until it reaches a very satisfying ending, without overly inflated concepts or complications. There is a clear moral dilemma, aspects of immigration and supremacism typical of the author’s latest work and escapes to cosmic horror with impeccable visual execution, like reading a story from ‘Creepy’ with a vignette at the end splashpage by Antonio Segura and Jaime Brocal Remohí.
Episode 2: Graveyard Rats
The second curiosity of the first night is ‘Graveyard Rats’ from Vincenzo Nataly, a short story based on the novel of the same name by author Henry Kuttner. Set in the muddy streets of rural Salem, Massachusetts, the film follows a graveyard keeper (David Hewlett) turned grave robber to search for the jewels of the dead, a new journey into a timeless horror theme. , from the classic Robert Wise to the different adventures of Burke and Hare in the movies.
The rats in the title have an obvious double meaning, and again deal with the theme of greed and the lack of morals derived from the pursuit of worldly benefits. The director of ‘Cube’ also applies his experience adapting Stephen King in a story reminiscent of ‘The Common Grave’, with certain echoes of ‘Of unknown origin’, that is to say that we have the presence of several huge rats and unexpected creatures, with a twist, again ultralovecraftianwhich brings the rats of the title to the story ‘The rats in the walls’, here converted into a survival claustrophobic with a delightful visual display.
For now, what ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities’ offers us is a continuation of the values that have made the name of the director of ‘El alley of lost souls’ one of the best modern horror filmmakers, mixing a wide range of periods, unimaginable beings that do not need much explanation and a level of detail that fulfills the immersive idea of his cinema by transferring the feeling of reading scary books on paper by candlelight, without seeking to reach anything deeperluckily, enjoying the, increasingly difficult to find, pleasure of traditional terror, without additives or excessive pretensions.