Le Cabinet de curiosités de Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro a sorti sur Netflix une anthologie d’horreur très respectable, dans laquelle il a laissé l'exclusivité à des cinéastes du genre encore peu rompus au métier. Et malgré les variations habituelles entre les différents segments, l’ensemble reste largement au-dessus de la moyenne en ce qui concerne sa qualité. Je ne serais d’ailleurs pas contre une autre saison. (26/11/2022)

With even a cursory knowledge of the interests of the titular creator, the viewer will be deprived of surprises. So, those who have del Toro's filmography at hand will calmly accept the fact that half of the episodes adapt Lovecraft or come very close to his themes. The rest of the stories contain a greater or lesser amount of gore or a touch of gothic horror. As a whole, Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities suffers from the common ailment of most anthologies, where an atmospheric spectacle is followed by coarse B-movie, which sometimes even left me ashamed of the creators. However, it doesn't matter too much here, perhaps due to the pulp origins of the entire genre. I was looking forward to each new episode and couldn't wait to see what and who would stand out for me. My impressions are thus slightly more favorable than the composite rating above would suggest. (28/11/2022)

I've loved Guillermo del Toro's work ever since I saw his phenomenal Faun's Labyrinth. His films are brimming with beautifully eerie (and raw) visuals and fantasy, but at the same time, the contrived form sometimes hurts the content. Cabinet of Curiosities bears a strong Del Toro signature, and it was interesting to see how the various directors handled the material, with each episode approaching the horror genre in a different way. Of the stories, the ones that appealed to me the most were the gothic-tinged Pickman’s Model (I'll have to look more closely at Lovecraft's work in the future), the visually unpleasant but evocative The Outside and the sensitive family thriller The Murmuring. But the other stories also had their own "creepy charm" and managed to make me tense. 3 3⁄4 stars! (06/11/2022)

Very nicely put together in terms of production, but still unexciting, forgettable and without substance. In other words, typical Netflix of recent times. For me, with the exception of the solid The Autopsy, by David Prior, all of the stories are united by their inability to engage and draw you into the plot until something explicitly genre-worthy starts happening, which in most cases happens near the end, instead of the beginning. (06/11/2022)