While there are plenty of shows that have attempted to capture the appeal of the iconic horror writer HP Lovecraft on the small screen, only one Netflix horror anthology series truly did justice to the author’s oeuvre. Ever since the success of The Walking Dead season 1 in 2010, horror TV has become a bigger mainstream phenomenon than ever before.
Admittedly, there were hit horror shows as far back as The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, and Tales from the Crypt, and ABC’s legendary genre-blending murder mystery Twin Peaks was as much a hardcore psychological horror as it was a small-town soap opera and an unconventional police procedural. However, the success of shows like The Walking Dead and FX’s anthology show American Horror Story paved the way for more mainstream hits in the genre, such as The Terror, Stranger Things, and The Last of Us.
While Mike Flanagan’s shows, from The Haunting of Hill House to Carrie, further highlight the consistent popularity of small-screen scares, another parallel TV trend brought the controversial horror author HP Lovecraft back to the mainstream. After True Detective season 1 borrowed liberally from Lovecraft devotees like Thomas Ligotti and Robert Chambers, countless later TV shows attempted to inject a Lovecraftian edge into their creepy storytelling. This is no easy feat, as evidenced by Netflix’s masterpiece Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities.
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities Is A Perfect Homage To Lovecraft
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To say that the late Lovecraft left behind a complicated legacy would be putting things mildly. The author was a massive, formative influence on everyone from Stephen King to Guillermo del Toro, but he was also astoundingly racist and unapologetic about his prejudices. To make matters worse, a lot of Lovecraft’s bigoted views are explicitly apparent in his writing, and the author was notably racist even for his bygone era.
That said, since Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos essentially codified the tropes that make up the cosmic horror subgenre, it is almost impossible for writers not to engage with his work one way or another. In 2022, Netflix’s ingenious anthology show Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities saw the masterful horror director find clever ways to address Lovecraft’s complex legacy while also delivering killer horror stories.
Two of Lovecraft’s short stories, “Pickman’s Model” and “Dreams in the Witch House,” are directly adapted by episodes of the series, which changes director with every outing. However, these are not the only outings that borrow from the writer’s work. Both Mandy director Panos Cosmatos’s episode, “The Viewing” and the series premiere “Lot 36,” directed by Hannibal series veteran Guillermo Navarro, are also deeply creepy homages to Lovecraft’s tentacled creations.
Guillermo del Toro Has A Long History (& Future?) With Lovecraftian Stories
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Even director The Empty Man director David Prior’s “The Autopsy,” despite being a simple two-hander, has some horrifying body horror implications that owe a creative debt to Lovecraft, while A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night director Ana Lily Amirpour’s “The Outside” has a darkly comic twist that wouldn’t feel out of place in an anthology dedicated to Lovecraft’s grimly ironic short stories.
Del Toro’s success at bringing Lovecraft to life on the small screen, both directly and indirectly, makes Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities a triumph. However, this won’t come as a surprise to longtime fans. His horror movies Cronos, Mimic, and Pan’s Labyrinth borrow imagery directly from Lovecraft stories.
Meanwhile, his comic book adaptations Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army integrate Lovecraft-inspired elements and creature designs in monsters like the Seven Gods of Chaos and settings like Beth Moira. Of course, there is also Del Toro’s infamous canceled Lovecraft adaptation At The Mountains of Madness, an unmade epic horror blockbuster that could outdo even Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities if the ambitious project is ever fully financed.
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities
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