Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (2022)

The anthology and its release structure

Guillermo del Toro created, executive produced and hosted the series. J. Miles Dale also served as executive producer and co-showrunner. Individual directors made the eight installments; del Toro's presentation of each story should not be mistaken for a directing credit on every episode.

Netflix released two episodes a day from 25 to 28 October 2022. The two direct Lovecraft adaptations appeared together on 27 October: Pickman's Model, directed by Keith Thomas and written by Lee Patterson, and Dreams in the Witch House, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and written by Mika Watkins.

Sources: Netflix Media Center — Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, John DiLillo — Cabinet of Curiosities episode guide, Netflix Tudum

Pickman’s Model: characters and expanded consequences

Ben Barnes plays William Thurber, Crispin Glover plays Richard Pickman and Oriana Leman plays Rebecca. The adaptation develops an artistic acquaintance into a longer relationship whose effects reach Thurber's family. Pickman's disturbing images are no longer confined to the account of one visit to a studio.

Thomas told Netflix's production interview that he conceived the stakes around a man's sanity and those closest to him. He also described del Toro's particular involvement in the monsters while giving directors latitude elsewhere. The interview places Glover's performance within the effort to make Pickman's experience of his subjects convincing.

Sources: John DiLillo — Pickman’s Model: Keith Thomas and Crispin Glover, Netflix Tudum, John DiLillo — Cabinet of Curiosities episode guide, Netflix Tudum

The source’s evidence and the episode’s new ending

Lovecraft's Thurber recounts his experiences to Eliot. The tale asks why Pickman's art appears so appallingly convincing and concludes with a photograph that confirms a model existed outside the painter's imagination. Its final effect depends on changing the status of images: what seemed artistic invention becomes evidence of a concealed world.

The episode adds a family catastrophe. Thurber's attempt to contain the paintings fails, and their influence reaches his wife and child. Its ending turns the danger of viewing into violence within the household. This is a screenplay development, not the concealed ending of the published story.

The comparison distinguishes two questions. The literary witness must recognize that art can represent something real he has never encountered. The television story additionally dramatizes what exposure to the images can do to their viewers. Both involve dangerous perception, but evidence and contagion are different narrative functions.

Sources: Pickman's Model — Unspeakable Tales ebook, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (2022) — credits, synopsis and release history

Dreams in the Witch House: grief as the motive

Rupert Grint's Walter Gilman is driven by the death of his twin sister, Epperley. As an adult he pursues spiritualist investigations, hoping to reach her. Ismael Cruz Córdova plays his friend Frank Elwood, while DJ Qualls plays the human-faced rat familiar, called Jenkins Brown in this version.

Hardwicke's interview describes grief and guilt as forces that have prevented Walter from living his own life. Watkins's screenplay makes him an active searcher for the afterlife. His passage into an uncanny forest attracts Keziah Mason, who seeks a route back to the living world. These motives and family connections substantially recast the original student of mathematics and folklore.

Sources: Samantha Nelson — Catherine Hardwicke and Rupert Grint on Dreams in the Witch House, Netflix Tudum

Bodies, spirits and the familiar’s victory

The episode ends by denying Walter the recovery he sought. After the confrontation with Keziah, the familiar kills him and takes control of his body. That outcome supplies a new form of appropriation to the source's already fatal relation between Gilman and Brown Jenkin.

Lovecraft's story combines the witch tradition with unfamiliar dimensions, physical traces of dream travel and the geometry of a particular room. The dead sister and the rescue quest are absent. The television episode's emotional motive should therefore be attributed to this version, even when links lead onward to the literary Walter, Keziah and the Witch House.

Sources: Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (2022) — credits, synopsis and release history, The Dreams in the Witch House — original text

Making the witch and the rat familiar

In the Television Academy's effects interviews, Sean Sansom and Mike Hill explain the design of Keziah, performed by Lize Johnston. Her silhouette combined a branching headpiece, facial appliances, a rib-like chest structure and limb elements. Their account emphasizes the practical challenge of balancing the headpiece as well as its appearance.

Qualls's familiar required separate prosthetic work, including facial elements, dentures and fur; a small skeleton prop also carried a human-like skull. These records identify production choices. They are not descriptions that should replace the witch's or familiar's anatomy in an article about Lovecraft's prose.

Sources: Television Academy — Monster Makers: Cabinet of Curiosities

The other six installments and the wider tradition

The remaining episodes are Lot 36, directed by Guillermo Navarro; Graveyard Rats, by Vincenzo Natali; The Autopsy, by David Prior; The Outside, by Ana Lily Amirpour; The Viewing, by Panos Cosmatos; and The Murmuring, by Jennifer Kent. Kuttner supplies the story behind Graveyard Rats, Shea the story behind The Autopsy, and E. M. Carroll the material behind The Outside. Del Toro supplies stories for Lot 36 and The Murmuring.

These distinctions permit links to the broader weird-fiction tradition without misattribution. A tentacled creature, forbidden object or subterranean encounter does not by itself make an episode an adaptation of Lovecraft. The two direct adaptations are identified by their credited source texts; the other installments belong here through their own authorship and the anthology's shared production context.

Sources: John DiLillo — Cabinet of Curiosities episode guide, Netflix Tudum, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (2022) — credits, synopsis and release history, Netflix Media Center — Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities