Monster Film/Media Review Prompt: “Cabinet of Curiosities” on Netflix

Write a 2-page (double-spaced) review of Guillermo del Toro’s 2022 Netflix monster anthology, “Cabinet of Curiosities,” with episodes directed by multiple great horror directors. For your review, you can choose to review the anthology as a whole, or you can choose to focus on one episode or a few of the episodes.

Some ideas for questions you might consider in your review: Is the anthology entertaining and effective in terms of storytelling? What specific aspects did you most enjoy? What factors fell short? Are the TV adaptations of the H.P. Lovecraft short stories (“Dreams In the Witch House” and “Pickman’s Model,” which we are also reading for class) successful or not, and in what specific ways? How do the visual stylistic elements, the interiors, and architecture represented, and how do the film effects (lighting, framing of scenes, scene editing, sound design, monster design, etc.) work to tell the stories and set a tone? What specific film techniques and directorial choices work to create elements of the horror genre, such as suspense, contrasts of sublimity and scale, feelings of awe or disgust, and uncanny or eerie images?