Guillermo del Toro's tantalizingly grotesque anthology series will hit Netflix just in time for 2022's spooky season, and it won't be for the faint of heart. The mind behind The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley, Crimson Peak, and Pan's Labyrinth is plowing his penchant for emotionally gripping, horror-fraught, and drunkenly colorful and immersive aesthetics into a new Netflix original series. Cabinet of Curiosities will offer poignant takes on life and survival in extreme circumstances and what it means to go on even when life seems too brutal to warrant the affair.
Cabinet of Curiosities promises to make a bloody splash for horror lovers and del Toro fans when it's released next month. Some of the show's writers include del Toro himself, The Twilight Zone writer Henry Kuttner, Lee Patterson of the show Colony, Aaron Stewart-Ahn, Mike Watkins, The Dark Night trilogy-affiliated David S. Goyer, and Sons of Anarchy's Regina Corrado. Guillermo del Toro will also serve as a director for some episodes and will act as a Hitchcockian host, presenting each episode with thoughtful and provoking intros and outros. J. Miles Dale will also co-showrun and executive produce with del Toro, Regina Corrado, and Gary Ungar.
Here is a full breakdown of the first look released by Netflix and lovingly presented by del Toro!
Showcasing the Talent Behind Cabinet of Curiosities
The first look released by Netflix mostly centers on del Toro's personal inspiration and love for this project. It also shows the filmmaker's deliberately collaborative and no-holds-barred work with other talented and visionary creatives to craft this series. He has empowered the creators behind each standalone episode with full reign over their own hour-long thing of beauty and terror.
Each of the eight episodes has its own director and distinct creative power at the behest of del Toro, who wanted each episode to have its own style and meaning. The best of the best was brought on to helm each hour. The directors include Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), writer/director Panos Cosmatos (Mandy), writer/director Jennifer Kent (The Babadook), Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight), Vincenzo Natali (Cube), David Prior (AM1200), and Keith Thomas (Fire Starter).
The show also boasts some exciting talent, with names such as Andrew Lincoln of The Walking Dead, Ismael Cruz Córdova of Rings of Power, Rupert Grint of the Harry Potter franchise, Ben Barnes of Shadow and Bone, and Sofia Boutella of Atomic Blonde.
The Styles and Themes Found Within Cabinet of Curiosities
In the same celebrated era of "tentacles undulating moistly," the Netflix first look is filled with everybody's worst nightmares -- screaming, drilling, wetness, sloppiness, jump scares, blood, and insides that usually go with them. It's clear that del Toro is going all out on his brainchild. The series is based on the short story collection of the same name by writers Stefan Bachmann, Katherine Catmull, Claire LeGrand, and Emma Trevayne.
The clips in the first look depict ghostly children, grisly creatures and monsters, torture, sadistic medical procedures, and frightening old houses like we have seen in Coraline. Spliced between and acting as a voice-over between these frightful clips, del Toro says, sitting at an ornate, gothic desk with all kinds of steampunk-ish and Sherlock Holmesian devices and trinkets, with love, passion, and faith, of the series:
"We wanted to create beautiful, practical creatures, with all the artistry that goes into creating a great monster. We Achieve some of the most remarkable images in the series. With Cabinet of Curiosities, what I'm trying to say is, look: the world is beautiful and horrible at exactly the same time."
The practical creatures del Toro speaks of in the trailer are beautifully and realistically horrifying. Because they are the products of the filmmaker's efforts, they will carry as much emotional weight as physical prowess. Del Toro's remarks hit at the core of the show and make it clear that the world is both beautiful and horrible. Though the two are opposites, the stories in each episode will teach us that the two can come to a kind of reconciliation. Or, at least, understanding and coexistence in the form of the characters' choosing to live anyway, to adapt and to go on, whatever that looks like.
Guillermo del Toro has an unparalleled gift for reminding us that life does not have to be perfect, typical, or even recognizable and that that is perfectly okay and valid. Clearly, in his project Cabinet of Curiosities, that gift is also here unbridled.
The anthology series will be released on Netflix just days before Halloween, on October 25th, 2022. We look forward to beholding the horror mastermind's stories and lessons once the series airs!