El gabinete de curiosidades de Guillermo del Toro

I stumbled upon this by mistake while browsing around in Netflix so I had zero expectations going into it. Knowing Guillermo del Toro's largely striking, magical, and gorgeous previous works, I figured this would be a delicious visual treat if nothing else. That it was.

All in all this first series was highly entertaining with a diverse set of stories, themes, and visuals. I won't spoil anything but a number of the shorts feature marvelously revolting blood & gore, with little or no CGI to spoil the realism (or perhaps the lack thereof, with some extra-gory over-the-top nastiness sprinkled in).

A few of the shorts trodded along slowly but all were thoroughly enjoyable. I hope this series continues!

Episode 1

The story is good, the sound and settings are great, it builds up to something special, and ends everything it took 90% of the episode to destroy and make it like all the other crappy horror stories that doesn't really have a proper ending.

The ending is like a weak Twilight Zone ending, it's dumb, its cheap, where you, rather than being scared, or, entertained even ... just feel like you've wasted 45 min minutes of your life that was a cliche like all the worst and most boring horror stories.

I don't know if I should call it horror even, not a single minute that is scary. But it could have been, but the last 5 minutes are so bad that it's amazing that it got made.

Lets hope episode 2 is better.

I really, really wanted to love this series.

Guillermo del Toro has produced some amazing horror, but this is probably not in his top 40%. Things started well, and the first three episodes are great in a non schmaltzy, Creepshow kind of way.

Episode four changed things for me. It was an undeniably female body shaming story, how far will you go to be accepted by the elite. Horror? Probably. And there were a few gratuitous moments with the taxidermy, but, not the main thrust of the story.

Loved Episode 5, based on a H. P. Lovecraft story.

Episode 6 was Okay, Ron Weasley chasing his dead sister into the after life.

Episode 7 was just plain weird, and didn't enjoy. Had a strange '70's vibe. The last episode was a poignant, but ultimately boring. This sneaked in at 6 stars as the good episodes were very good, but really a 50/50 effort.

Like Jordan Peele's recent try in a newer Twilight Zone, Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities has good production, cinematography, lighting and on occasion great atmosphere. However, for me, after watching four episodes, each have been bogged down by story and payoff. What the 1950s Twilight Zone did in only 25 minutes was astounding, not that every one was top tier amazing, but still gave a relatively coherent and well done story with interesting characters. In this day and age however, with Netflix and Paramount+ and Amazon Prime, an hour and change is the norm and it just doesn't work and I guess I hoped Toro would avoid this problem.

Every episode has setup upon setup and when it finally does get to the actually meat, there's been so many appetizers I feel full. Or the climax is so short I sit thinking, "Wait, it's over?" Even my favorite so far "The Autopsy" has Toro introduce it, giving away a vital plot point that could have been revealed later on. There's then almost half an hour until we get to said autopsy, wherein when the big twist is revealed has a James Bond villain explanation for the ages (Thanks David S. Goyer, as always).

Not that I'm opposed to world building, character introduction, atmosphere creating tension, but where minutes-watched-algorithms have replaced ratings, 1 hour+ episodes that could be edited down significantly for our enjoyment would be and should be crucial. I'm still rooting for the show, because I love anthologies, but I also know LESS is MORE.

Edit: I've watched the next four and feel they too could have been edited down to avoid redundancy, but Pickman's Model might be the exception. It was a brilliant slow decent into madness that makes Lovecraft so special. After watching all 8 I noticed scenes that could have been combined or characters cut completely. Either way, I still hope there's a season 2.

Guillermo's long-awaited horror anthology series is a bit of a mixed bag, sadly. However I'm a huge anthology TV fan so I found I didn't lose patience with it entirely. Tonally everything is at least interesting, and while the strongest episodes for me (Prior's unbearably tense The Autopsy and Cosmatos's mesmerically specific The Viewing) didn't outstay their welcome, it's clear the main issue here was length. In stories like The Outside and The Murmuring, the drag becomes very real and plots that need only half an hour or less become almost tortuously over extended. Still, the casts are strong (although some of the accents, less so) and there are some decent scares. I hope it gets another series and we get as much variety in the runtimes as we do with the stories.