Part comic book, part ghost story, part nightmare fuel,
Guillermo Del Toro's "Cabinet of Curiosities" is a chilling
collection of terrifying tales – and these are the scariest moments. Warning: spoilers ahead.
In "Lot 36," we meet Nick, played by Tim Blake Nelson,
a man who makes his living buying abandoned storage lockers and selling
their contents. After purchasing a unit whose owner recently died,
he takes some things to a collector named Agatha. Among the unique items is an unusual table.
"It's a seance table." "Like Ouija board seance?"
"A bit more serious than that."
But this is no ordinary seance table – this one has hidden drawers containing hidden books.
Agatha brings in a man named Roland,
who specializes in rare texts. He's ready to pay $300,000 for the set, but only if
Nick can produce the fourth missing volume – one that's meant to bind a demon to Earth.
As they go back to find the text, Roland reveals the story of the original owner of lot 36 — a
German man who made the horrific choice to offer his sister, Dottie, as a vessel for
a demon. The men discover a hidden room within the locker that holds Dottie's decaying corpse,
containing a demon in her hollowed-out face. Nick spots the fourth book just out of reach,
and though Roland warns him not to touch it, he cannot resist, thus breaking the
spell. Dottie rises as the demon's tentacles reach out of her face, and Roland is devoured.
Set in Salem at the beginning of the 20th century, the "Graveyard Rats" story follows Masson,
a gravedigger who turned grave robber to pay off some of his debts. After coming up short,
he's convinced that an unlikely suspect — rats — are stealing the bodies,
along with the valuables. And then, one night, he has a creepy vision — seeing a rat tail
hanging from his water-stained ceiling, he gives it a yank and the ceiling opens,
raining rats all over him. Later, unearthing a grave, Masson finds an empty coffin, and then sees
the body being dragged away by rats. Determined to retrieve his fortune, he follows it underground.
" Where are you? I will have my vengeance!"
Soon enough, Masson comes face to face with an enormous Rat Queen,
looming with drool dripping from her razor-sharp teeth. Determined to retrieve the valuables,
he goes on, crawling through tunnels, battling the Rat Queen and her babies,
and even a re-animated skeleton! Making his way toward what he hopes is the way out, Masson
instead gets trapped in a coffin, trapped forever by his own greed in classic horror story fashion.
Academy award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham plays Carl, a medical examiner dying of cancer.
His friend, Sheriff Craven, played by Glynn Turman, asks for his help explaining some
mysterious deaths that occurred in the local mine. As Carl performs autopsies on the dead miners,
an alien parasite that's taken over one of the miner's bodies makes itself known.
"What are you?"
"I'm a traveler."
Tying Carl to an autopsy table, the alien creature prepares to transfer itself
from the miner's dead body into Carl's living one. While cutting itself open,
the alien explains to Carl his plan to murder the Sheriff. Carl figures out
that the creature has no senses of its own, which is why it needs a human body as host.
Acting fast, Carl grabs the knife from the alien's dead hand. Still tied to the table,
the alien, in its small, octopus-like true form, begins burrowing into Carl. He tries
killing the creature, but can't reach it. In a truly heroic move,
Carl decides to sacrifice himself, by destroying his own body before the alien
can use it — slicing his ears and eyes with a scalpel, saving his friend, and the world.
"The Outside" tells the darkly comedic tale of Stacy, a socially awkward
bank teller desperate to fit in with her co-workers, coveting their beauty, clothes,
and perfect lives. When she's invited to one of their parties and given a box of expensive lotion,
she's thrilled, and proceeds to slather it all over her face. But a horrible allergic
reaction occurs. Refusing to be deterred by her red, itchy, peeling skin, Stacy continues
her regimen, even as her rash worsens and her devoted husband Keith begs her to stop.
"What's so funny Stacy?"
"No, I'm not talking to the TV."
Devoted to his wife, and supportive of her taxidermy hobby, Keith is a beacon
of sensibility. Keith tries his best to be supportive of Stacy and her transformation
journey, even as her skin and mental state get worse. Finally, it all proves to be too much
even for him, and he insists that she stop. It's a suggestion she doesn't appreciate,
to say the least. After killing her husband, and stuffing poor Keith
like one of her taxidermy projects, her sought-after makeover is finally complete.
Inspired by an H.P. Lovecraft story, "Pickman's Model" tells the tale of Richard Pickman, played
by Crispin Glover, who invites a young artist named William Thurber, played by Ben Barnes,
to look at his extremely creepy paintings. One of the paintings depicts a woman,
a distant relative and witch who killed her husband and served him to members of her coven.
Pickman taunts Thurber with the painting, and Thurber feels deeply disturbed looking at it.
Years later, Thurber continues to be haunted by Pickman's work, plagued by vivid nightmares,
including one in which he walks into the dinner party from the painting, but his
own head is being served as the main course. Jumping forward in time, we now see Thurber as
an older man with a wife and son, running his own museum, but still haunted by memories of Pickman.
One day, Pickman unexpectedly returns,
shocking Thurber. He asks Thurber to come to his house to see some new
paintings. In an attempt to save others from the madness he's suffered, Thurber goes alone.
"I know you want to see my new paintings! The finest I've done, I need you to see them."
But seeing Pickman's new paintings overwhelms Thurber. Unable to control his rage and anguish
after all the years of torment, he shoots Pickman and burns down his house. The next day,
when Thurber takes his family to his museum, he's shocked to see Pickman's paintings hanging there,
and horrifyingly, one of Thurber's colleagues, Joe, standing in front of the work,
his eyes gouged out. His wife and child are also looking at a painting, and he makes them stop,
but it is too late. When Thurber returns home, his wife has gouged her eyes out.
Most horrifyingly, she's also in the middle of preparing their son's head for dinner.
Another H.P. Lovecraft inspired story, this dark fairy tale is brought to life by
Catherine Hardwicke, director of the original "Twilight." It tells the story of Walter,
played by Rupert Grint, of "Harry Potter" fame, a man obsessed with bringing his twin sister,
who died when they were young, back to life. He becomes part of the Spiritualist Society
and discovers a potion that allows him to find his sister in a place called The Realm
of the Dead. Walter even manages to bring her back to the land of the living, temporarily.
"You brought her back with you? You left a ripple?"
"I just wanted my sister back."
Walter's actions anger a witch named Keziah — a sinister being who also resides in the underworld,
and wants Walter's sister to stay there. With skin like petrified wood and branch-like hair,
she resembles a gnarled tree in human form. Her screams sound like nails on a chalkboard,
and her hair is burning embers. Furious, this witch tries to stab poor Walter in the eye,
but his ghost sister saves him. She seems different, now, calmer, telling Walter she's
not scared anymore. By the end of the episode, poor Walter can't really say the same for himself.
Peter Weller, the actor perhaps most famously known as Robocop, stars in "The Viewing" as
Lionel, a wealthy and eccentric elderly man who invites four interesting people
to his mansion. There's a psychic named Targ, an astrophysicist named Charlotte,
a musician named Randall, and a famous novelist named Guy. Set in the 1970s,
"The Viewing" benefits from a very distinctive 70s aesthetic, matching this story's slow burn
intensity. As the plot unfolds, it becomes clear why Lionel has gathered these people together.
As it turns out, Lionel needs their help understanding an artifact he's kept tucked
away for years, a strangely unsettling object that he suspects could be an alien life form.
"Did
you see that?"
Eventually, the group awakens the artifact, and as the meteor-like rock glows and cracks open,
a gooey creature with worm-like tendrils emerges. These tendrils turn into demonic
horns, releasing a terrible energy and a high-pitched sound. Horribly, Targ's' face
melts off and Guy's head explodes, which allows the other two, namely, Charlotte and Randall,
to get the heck out of there before they meet their ends as well. But with the alien unleashed
into the world by the end of the night, it's not exactly what you could call a happy ending.
In a tale of quiet grief and haunted houses, married couple and ornithologists Nancy and
Edgar are grieving the loss of their daughter. But instead of dealing with their devastation
in a healthy manner, they throw themselves further into their work, which is studying birds.
Starring Andrew Lincoln as Edgar, and Essie Davis as Nancy, the episode follows the couple as they
move into an old house on an isolated island. Eventually, Nancy starts feeling and seeing a
mysterious presence in the house, discovering through photos and letters that the previous
occupant, a woman named Claudette, had suffered many tragedies in the home.
"I'm so cold"
"Who's that?"
Apparently, after Claudette learned that her husband was married to another woman,
she also discovered she was pregnant. The husband abandoned her and their unborn child,
who remained hidden away in the creepy, isolated home. Then the ghostly sounds
and sightings begin. Once, Nancy hears a child crying and sees a little boy standing
at the top of the stairs, dripping wet. After kneeling down to comfort the child,
he turns to reveal a decaying and water-bloated face. The shock knocks Nancy to the floor. Nancy
finally asks the groundskeeper about Claudette, and he tells her that she
accidentally killed her son, drowning him in the bathtub, after which she killed herself.
"How did he die?"
"He drowned."
"She drowned him didn't she?"
By the end of "The Murmuring," it seems that the biggest monster anyone could face is grief.