Cabinet of Curiosities: Episode 1 – Lot 36

Horror fans are in for a real treat in this series. Produced by the master of the supernatural, Guillermo del Toro, each ~50-minute episode is directed and written by a different filmmaker, many based on books or short stories.

Most of them are unique – not your same old horror tropes. You’ll appreciate the originality and ask yourself WTF these famous faces are doing here. Makes for a damn anthology series!

I was going to tackle these in one long post, but some of the stories are more nuanced (this one isn’t), so you’re getting one post per episode. We’ll start in order with Episode 1: Lot 36.

The Whole Story w/ Spoilers

• • An old man dies and leaves behind a storage locker unit. It gets sold at an auction to a MAGA asshole who owes more than he can pay, thinking he’ll sell the contents to pay some loan shark.

• • A Latina women shows up to the office to pay the balance on this unit only to find out the business owner forgot to update the contact info for this unit…so now she’s gotta sweet talk MAGA-hole.

• • The woman explains to this what happened, but he obviously doesn’t GAF because she’s Mexican. There’s dialogue about laws are laws, all that Republican shit they like to spew when it works for them.

• • If you noticed in the security footage, the old man did a little ritual before entering the unit. And the business owner mentions how old part of the building is. This sets you up for what happens.

• • The MAGA guy finds some antiques and brings them into an appraisers hoping they’ll return a lot of cash. One of the items is a seance table with several books inside, which are extremely rare, especially if he can find the fourth book (funny, for a guy that hates Spanish, he reads Latin no problem). The second appraiser heads with MAGA guy to the locker.

• • In the car, the appraiser admits to knowing the family. He tells a story about the original owner’s sister…yeah. Listen to that.

• • Then begins the search for the fourth book. You get bits and pieces of the story as they find things, but MAGA guy finds the unit extends beyond what they thought. As they enter, the appraiser gives MAGA-hole some pretty specific directions/warnings. You can guess where that’ll go.

• • There’s a crazy long hallway they walk filled with the rotting corpse of that old dude’s sister. She’s possessed, laid out on the floor, her face now caved in and filled with with squiggly things. MAGA-hole storms through the whole thing – like he stormed the Capitol? – triggering the book to burn and the creature to start wandering the halls of this storage locker.

• • Payback comes as MAGA-hole trying to get out of the locked building to be met by the Latina woman, who uses the padlock he gave her to now lock him in. He gets eaten, THE END.

TLDR; Summary

MAGA asshole won’t give back a storage unit to a Latina for Republican reasons. Turns out, the unit houses a demon and his last hope happens to be the woman he discriminated against.

The Horror Hating

• • There’s a lot you don’t catch the first time around – one could argue there’s too much to look at. Specifically, the origin storyline.

• • All those old antiques: the stuff in this locker reminds me of The Cabin in the Woods – everything in there looks like it could be a haunted object.

• • The lady appraiser clearly knows what those books are. I can’t figure out her end game. She looks scared and pleased at the same time?

• • Is the second appraiser a priest? He just gives me that vibe.