Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities

Cabinet of Curiosities is fairly typical in its anthological unevenness, with two or three clear winners, one or two total duds and a few patchy, well, curiosities. As a bonus, it’s doubtful that any pair of viewers will have the identical heirarchy.

These episodes are often provocative — there’s visual imagination to spare, here, generally tending toward the visceral and gross. But there is, too often, a somewhat trite takeaway. It reverses del Toro’s tendency to find the profound within familiar storytelling tropes: Here, we cross dimensions into the world of eldritch only to find fairly simple morals.

As vanity projects go, his series is considerably less imperious than Hitchcock’s, but it also feels far less likely to make a mark in the long run, or even in its own accelerated, pop-cultural moment.

As a horror maestro and auteur, Guillermo del Toro has earned the right to his moment in the spotlight -- in this case presiding on camera, Alfred Hitchcock style, over "Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities." It's only too bad that this eight-episode Netflix horror anthology lacks the verve of the director's cinematic work, with episodes that feature monstrous special effects but half-baked stories that don't really draw blood.

“Cabinet of Curiosities” is just not very frightening. ... There’s an abundance of visual talent on display in “Cabinet,” but there isn’t a corresponding stock of storytelling imagination.

Sadly, while episode directors such as Vincenzo Natali and Catherine Hardwicke (all of whom del Toro makes sure to verbally credit before throwing to their episode) give their assignments unique visual and stylistic flourishes, the tales they’re tasked with executing are often less than the sum of their parts. Too often there’s gore without scares, punishments that aren’t particularly ironic and stories struggling to justify their run time.