Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities review – the horror series that’s perfect pre-Halloween viewing - The Guardian

There are fewer safer bets than being a Guillermo del Toro fan. Whether he’s breathing beingness into a woody puppet, having Sally Hawkins autumn successful emotion with a fish, oregon defending Martin Scorsese online, helium is simply a seemingly endless root of delight. In the run-up to Halloween, helium continues to carnivore effect with his Cabinet of Curiosities (Netflix), an eight-part bid that is arsenic elegant arsenic it is grotesque. While it is assumed that successful immoderate anthology bid determination volition beryllium hits and misses, thing successful this furniture is worthy discarding.

Del Toro has written 2 of the episodes but “curated” them all, and assembled 8 directors to make self-contained nightmares. He appears astatine the commencement of each, not dissimilar Rod Serling successful The Twilight Zone. But Del Toro cuts a much sinister figure, with a firmly unsmiling look arsenic helium ominously presents each occurrence arsenic though it were a cursed object. The literal furniture appears alongside him, an ornate woody operation that resembles a many-tiered mansion; its contents, we are told, scope from keys to bones to unicorn horns. Meanwhile, Del Toro’s furniture is besides brimming with immoderate of the astir breathtaking voices successful horror, including Jennifer Kent of The Babadook, Ana Lily Amirpour of A Girl Walks Home Alone astatine Night and David Prior of The Empty Man. But each keeps their offering rooted successful Guillermo’s signature benignant of the twisted fairytale, packed with stomach-churning effects and morbid morality. This is simply a furniture successful which hubris leads you to hellhole and cruelty comes backmost tenfold.

The bid starts with Lot 36, directed by Del Toro’s semipermanent collaborator Guillermo Navarro– who won an Oscar arsenic the cinematographer of the director’s finest film, Pan’s Labyrinth. There are akin threads of fascism and phantasy successful Lot 36, successful which Tim Blake Nelson plays a subject seasoned dilatory being swallowed full by “alt-right” talking points. He spends his days being chased by indebtedness collectors and selling the contents of abandoned retention units. Blake Nelson is phenomenal, playing each the bitterness and selfishness of his fascist brainwashing but keeping capable tiny cracks of humanity to stay compelling, adjacent erstwhile helium inevitably comes crossed a retention portion with genuinely horrific contents.

The bid past plunges into its tautest tale, Graveyard Rats, from Vincenzo Natali who was down the cult-classic Kafkaesque nightmare Cube. Adapted from the Henry Kuttner abbreviated story, the premise is simple: a grave-robber digs up a affluent corpse, lone to spot it dragged distant by a battalion of rats. Undeterred, helium pursues the vermin done acheronian and twisted tunnels and discovers thing acold worse down there. The travel done the tunnels is utterly foul and heart-stoppingly stressful. Equally horrific moments and grisly body-horror populate the pitch-black communicative of The Autopsy, wherever Prior arsenic a coroner’s bureau doc encounters a corpse successful request of much than a “cause of death”.

Meanwhile, HP Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model is successful the hands of The Vigil manager Keith Thomas, who embraces the fantastical imaginable of Del Toro and the cosmic dread of Lovecraft with a formed led by the ever intriguing Crispin Glover. But astir fantastical of each is The Viewing from Panos Cosmatos, manager of the avant garde Nicolas Cage revenge flick Mandy. This cause travel gone incorrect fable builds to a demonic fig that feels plucked from Del Toro’s coterie.

Throughout the bid the code shifts, but it ever keeps 1 ft successful Del Toro’s filmography; the acheronian humour of the Hellboy films is contiguous successful makeover nightmare The Outside, wherever Stacey (a brilliantly awkward Kate Micucci) plays an amateur taxidermist longing to acceptable successful with her glamorous colleagues astatine the bank. Despite her husband’s (Martin Starr) protestations, she cannot defy the lure of Alo Glo, sold connected tv infomercials by a deliciously campy Dan Stevens. It’s a classical communicative of “be cautious what you privation for” done with each the panache you would expect of Del Toro and manager Amirpour.

Perhaps the astir important deviation from the battalion is the slightest scary but astir haunting entry. The Murmuring sees Kent reunite with its prima Essie Davis for a mournful communicative of a brace of ornithologists retreating to a secluded location to probe vertebrate migrations and retrieve from a unspeakable loss. The portion has each the gentle sorrow of Kent’s enactment and the calamity of Del Toro’s orphanage fearfulness The Devil’s Backbone. It besides perfectly encapsulates what makes Cabinet of Curiosities an implicit triumph. It lets film-makers gully inspiration from the maestro without squashing their ain spirit, giving Del Toro plentifulness of delectably nasty tales to contiguous to the viewer. There seems nary amended mode to countdown to Halloween than this assurance that the authorities of fearfulness is successful safe, if sinister, hands.