Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: Lot 36

October 27, 2022 10:27 PM - Season 1, Episode 1

In the first episode of Guillermo del Toro's new anthology horror show on Netflix, an unscrupulous man gets more than he bargained for when he buys an abandoned storage unit.

Directed by frequent del Toro cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and based on a short story by del Toro.

posted by whir (10 comments total)

I'm thrilled to have a new horror anthology, and one produced by del Toro at that! However, this first episode is pretty bland. Technically, everything's great and the acting is solid, but the story itself is predictable. It's not bad, just not particularly scary.
posted by riotnrrd at 8:52 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I thought the bit where the woman whom he had wronged gave him his just desserts was a little on the nose, and this episode gestures towards larger themes about race and greed without actually saying anything interesting about them. The production values were pretty great, though, and I enjoyed how Tim Blake Nelson's protagonist did not become any more likeable as you got to know him better.
posted by whir at 11:58 AM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

The woman who lost the contents of her storage unit seemed odd. Why was she still hanging around the storage company in the middle of the night? I kept thinking she was another manifestation of The Thing in Lot 36. But no, she was just standing around, watching.
posted by SPrintF at 1:29 PM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

I didn't get that, either. She took two busses to get there. Her being able to get home depends on the bus schedule, so she can't just go home whenever she wants. Is she planning on staying the night?
posted by Spike Glee at 9:46 PM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'll probably watch more, because I love mediocre horror, but boy was that first episode just a big stretch of blahhhh. We spend so much time establishing characters and tensions, and then the monster has literally nothing to do with any of it and the main character's "sin" isn't related to his callousness or stinginess but just him not taking direction well and having a clumsy foot. Just a total mess from a narrative and a thematic point of view. Also one of the worst-written Satanists I have ever encountered. Like not even entertainingly bad, but just completely confused and confusing.

Cool monster, though.
posted by Scattercat at 3:59 AM on October 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

There are so many threads that go nowhere that I feel like maybe this was originally written with a second act where the main guy makes a deal with the demon.
posted by Pyry at 9:04 PM on October 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

"sin" isn't related to his callousness or stinginess

Wouldn't his sin have been his greed?
posted by rozcakj at 8:58 AM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

Right, but what he actually does to wake the demon is smear the circle because he doesn't believe it's real or dangerous. It's completely disconnected.
posted by Scattercat at 7:47 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

It really felt like it needed a button scene of some kind at the end.

Maybe the guy who runs the facility declares the unit abandoned and heads in to loot it himself or prep it to sell it a second time and...
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:32 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

my read was that the woman who lost her possessions in unit 80-something was waiting for the main guy to throw her stuff out, so she could rescue it from the dumpster.
posted by LegallyBread at 3:08 PM on February 15