Cabinet of Curiosities Season 1 Review – A curiously compelling compendium of chills

Episode Guide

There are plenty of great horror anthologies that are available on the tiny screen. From the timeless series Goosebumps to the wonderful and sinister (and extremely underrated, I might suggest) Channel Zero, there’s lots of originality within this realm. It’s not even getting into the classics such as The Twilight Zone (the original not the reboot! ) The show that started the whole trend. In general, it’s one of the most original ideas to appear on television.

Guillermo Del Toro has an extensive filmography, which includes classics such as Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Hellboy to name just some. When Netflix announced an anthology of horror from the director himself – mixing his imagination with the imaginative realm of horror, a lot of viewers viewed it as the ultimate spooky selection of Halloween 2022. After having watched all eight episodes, it definitely does not disappoint.

The show deals with all kinds of diverse themes, including corruption and greed loss, and vanity. These emotions are interspersed throughout the chapters, with different degrees of terror. Certain chapters are more dramatic tales with a more allegorical tone, like the hour-long chapter that examines beauty standards for women as well as fears of becoming left behind. Another story is focused on a stifling journey into the underground graveyard caverns that is home to a large number of rats.

Each chapter tells an extremely simple, but unclear narrative, and the majority of them conclude with an ending that is abrupt conclusion. This is actually beneficial to the narrative very well and allows many people to share their thoughts with relatives and friends and come to different conclusions about what the story is about or what message they’re trying to convey.

In the aforementioned beauty story, the main protagonist is empty, yet she has a love for being a taxidermist when she has time. It’s possible that the idea of removing the inner parts of these animals and leaving them in a hollow state goes to reflect how she thinks about her life. This is before even mentioning that the animal involved is a duck. They are usually regarded as social animals.

These kinds of additions can be extremely beneficial and can help set this apart from one more “spooky anthology” and into something that is truly enjoyable and profound. Obviously, not all chapters function as well as the others, and your personal favorites will probably differ. Personally, the chapter that I’m most fond of The Murmuring is heads and tails ahead of other episodes and, aside from being well-written, it’s quite scary!

Visually the show is stunning and all episodes have a different Director who is introduced by some Hitchcock-style introductions from Guillermo Del Toro himself. In this way, highlighting the directors through this method reveals the distinctive stylistic distinctions between the episodes.

Episode 7 features Panos Cosmatos in the driver’s seat, there’s an intense effort to incorporate a variety of distinct 80s influences. Additionally”Graveyard Rats “Graveyard Rats” episode, directed by Vincenzo Natali, uses a clever use of lighting that really intensifies the drama.