O Gabinete de Curiosidades de Guillermo Del Toro

Guillermo's long-awaited horror anthology series is a bit of a mixed bag, sadly. However I'm a huge anthology TV fan so I found I didn't lose patience with it entirely. Tonally everything is at least interesting, and while the strongest episodes for me (Prior's unbearably tense The Autopsy and Cosmatos's mesmerically specific The Viewing) didn't outstay their welcome, it's clear the main issue here was length. In stories like The Outside and The Murmuring, the drag becomes very real and plots that need only half an hour or less become almost tortuously over extended. Still, the casts are strong (although some of the accents, less so) and there are some decent scares. I hope it gets another series and we get as much variety in the runtimes as we do with the stories.

Guillermo del Toro introduces a series of one off takes of horror.

Each episode offers something a little different, they are all beautifully presented, well made and superbly acted, there are some great special effects, with some impressive visuals.

It's hard to score this as an overall series, as the quality varies so much, I found the order of episodes a little curious, I'm not sure I'd have gone with the first two at the start.

If you're looking for an out and out horror series, you may be a little disappointed, some episodes have it, some are just strange, with implied horror, but no real scares.

The standout episode is Autopsy, it has everything, true horror, a strong atmosphere, and was everything I hoped this series was going to be. I also really rated The Murmuring.

The Witch's house was the biggest disappointment, it was the one I looked forward to most of all, for me it just didn't work.

It's watchable, and some of them I'd watch again, some I wouldn't. 7/10.

I thought I would not review this series until I watched all 8 of the episodes.

Episodes 1 to 4 were very good but I would not call them horror per se.

Episode 5 was also very good and more humour in it than the previous ones.

Episode 6 with Rupert Grint was okay and I was disappointed with it, Rupert is a good actor and I thought he would have gone onto bigger and better things, maybe this will kick his career in to overdrive.

Episode 7 was awful, the worst out of the bunch. I was so looking forward to this one as it had Peter Weller in it, in fact if you look quickly at him he looked like David Carradine in his latter years. This one is worth a miss.

Episode 8, the final episode was the only real horror in the whole series, this one was also very good. If you like a good gothic feel horror then this one is for you.

Overall a good series of course with hit and miss episodes.

Gotta love seeing those inside bits eh.

A bit of an uneasy watching hodge podge. Each episode starts with del Toro visiting his cabinet and grabbing something that seemingly relates to the oncoming story.

Hitchcock he's not.

Every episode has something going for it. Originality, production and mostly fine acting...but most of the characters are just so unpleasant, one doesn't care what happens to them.

My 3 picks are "Graveyard Rats" (Good Fun), "The Inside" (beware those late night infomercials) and "The Murmuring" (classic spooky ghost story).

I watched this first series in the cold hard daylight which probably lessened the enjoyment effect somewhat.

Probably more a late night thing (Duh!!!).

Guillermo del Toro is it master of visuals. I think of him as the Mexican Tim Burton of horror. He quite often get top a-listers to work for him and his films. But the acting talent and the visuals cannot overcome the terrible screenplays that were put into the show. Unfortunately, his production screenplays haven't been very good for some time. This anthology also doesn't have the best directing talent behind the camera. Many of the dialogue lines are just terribly written. It's not really the actors' fault. It's just the lines provided are bad because we have seen these actors do better work with other film directors. Guillermo del Toro should hire better screenwriters and directors and less on a-listers. The visuals alone don't make great entertainment. You really need a good screenplay to accompany it.