Netflix got eight horror stories out of Guillermo del Toro in October 2022, and the best of them are worth the wait. Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities is a horror anthology miniseries created by del Toro for the streamer. It runs one season, eight episodes, and it landed all at once: the first episode premiered October 25, 2022, the last on October 28, 2022. It is filed under Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, which is roughly the range it covers.
The premise is simple and it is the show’s smartest decision. Del Toro personally curated the stories. He introduces each episode himself. The series is built as “a collection of the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s personally curated stories, described as [equally] sophisticated and horrific.” Eight modern horror stories, made in the traditions of the Gothic and Grand Guignol. Two of them del Toro co-wrote. The rest were written and directed by other filmmakers.
That structure is the whole argument. This is not a del Toro film cut into pieces. It is a cabinet, opened one section at a time, each episode a different curiosity pulled off the shelf.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Rod Serling and the Night Gallery debt
Del Toro has been open about where the frame comes from. He credits Rod Serling’s Night Gallery as one of the inspirations for Cabinet of Curiosities, specifically the way Serling opens and closes each episode. That is not a vague nod. It is the load-bearing wall.
He told an interviewer that his memories of Night Gallery remain sharp — the dread that took hold of him episode by episode, the distorted wide-angle faces of the opening, Gil Mellé’s score and the fear and excitement it stirred, and Serling’s careful introductions to Tom Wright’s paintings. Those images, he said, still haunt his imagination.
Read that closely and you get the blueprint. The host as curator. The introduction as ritual. The painting as the thing you cannot unsee. Cabinet of Curiosities swaps the painting for the cabinet, but the job is the same: del Toro stands at the door, tells you what you are about to look at, and then steps aside.
It works. The introductions are short, and they do the thing a good anthology host must do — they set a tone without stealing the episode. Del Toro is not performing. He is presenting.
Eight tales of terror, two of them his
The official synopsis is blunt about the goods: “Bizarre nightmares unfold in eight tales of terror in this visually stunning, spine-tingling horror collection curated by Guillermo del Toro.”
That is marketing copy, but it is not wrong. The show is visually stunning. That is the part that holds up best across all eight episodes. Whatever else varies — and a lot varies — the production values do not. These are not cheap-looking hours. The special effects are practical where they need to be and invisible where they should be.
The range of the eight:
- Two episodes co-written by del Toro himself.
- The remaining episodes written and directed by various filmmakers.
- Stories drawn from the Gothic tradition.
- Stories drawn from the Grand Guignol tradition.
- Del Toro introducing each episode.
- Each episode tied to a different curiosity from the cabinet.
That last bullet is the conceit that ties the whole thing together, and it is more than decoration. The cabinet is the organizing idea. Each episode corresponds to a different curiosity inside it. Open a drawer, get a story.
What the anthology format buys and costs
Here is the honest accounting. An anthology lives and dies on its weakest entry, because a viewer remembers the bad one as long as the good one. Eight episodes is a lot of surface area. It is also the format’s great advantage: if one story does not land for you, the next one is a clean start with a new cast, a new director and a new set of rules.
Cabinet of Curiosities uses that advantage well. It does not ask you to track a mythology or remember who betrayed whom three hours ago. Del Toro’s introduction resets the room every time. That is a real pleasure in 2022 television, where almost everything else is asking you to commit to a decade-long arc.
The cost is consistency. With different writers and directors on most episodes, the show’s quality is not uniform. The directing is a strength across the board, and the cast performances hold up. But pacing is where the show gives ground. Some episodes take their time getting to the thing you came for, and the middle stretch of an hour can sag before the ending snaps tight. Some of the writing does not carry its own weight either.
That is the trade the show makes. It buys variety and a clean slate. It pays in a few episodes that are better in memory than in the watching.
The case for the Gothic and Grand Guignol mix
What Cabinet of Curiosities gets right, and gets right more often than not, is the tonal mix. The Gothic and Grand Guignol traditions are not the same thing, and the show knows it. Gothic is dread, atmosphere, the slow realization that the house is wrong. Grand Guignol is blood, extremity, the pleasure of going too far on purpose.
Putting both in one cabinet is the reason the show does not feel like eight versions of the same episode. Some entries are quiet and haunted. Some are loud and nasty. Del Toro’s taste is the throughline, and his taste is broad enough to hold both without the collection feeling random.
This is where the curation claim earns its keep. Anyone can license eight horror scripts. Del Toro’s name on the box means something only if the selection reflects a point of view. It does. The Gothic and Grand Guignol pairing is a point of view.
Where the show loses its footing
The criticism that lands is about pacing, and about some writing aspects. Both are fair. An anthology’s middle episodes are where a viewer’s attention is most fragile, and Cabinet of Curiosities does not always protect it. An episode can spend its first half building a world and its second half rushing the payoff, which is the wrong way round for horror.
The writing problem is harder to pin down because it is not one problem. With this many writers, some episodes have a script that is sharper than its premise, and some have a premise that is sharper than its script. The show never collapses. It just does not clear the bar it sets for itself in the strongest hours.
None of that is fatal. It is the difference between a collection you finish and a collection you return to. Cabinet of Curiosities is mostly the first, with a few entries that are genuinely the second.
The verdict on Cabinet of Curiosities
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities is a good anthology with a clear identity, and the identity is the reason to watch it. The introductions, the cabinet conceit, the Gothic and Grand Guignol split, the production values, the directing, the performances — these are not separate virtues. They are one idea executed with care. Del Toro built a frame and then filled it with stories he actually wanted to tell you about.
The weak points are real. Pacing drags in places. Some writing does not match the ambition of the episode around it. But the show’s best argument is the thing it refuses to do: it never asks you to wait three seasons for an answer. Eight episodes, eight curiosities, one host at the door. In a television landscape built on commitment, that is a feature, not a limitation.
The score is 7.2 of 10.
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