This horror anthology was created, executive produced, and hosted by Guillermo del Toro. It was released in 2022, but I didn't see it until 2025. Each episode is by a different writer and director.
Lot 36 (46 minutes)
This is based on a short story by del Toro. In 1991, a racist, misanthropic, and generally unpleasant man named Nick Appleton (Tim Blake Nelson) buys a storage lot at an auction, which had belonged to a man who recently died. He is in debt to the kind of person you don't want to be indebted to, and hopes that selling the items he finds in the lot will get him enough money to pay him off. And... I don't want to spoil any of the details of the plot, except to say that it ends with a truly horrifying demon being resurrected and chasing Nick. I thought the story was just okay. I mean, the acting was fine, and the visuals were quite good, but I didn't like Nick at all, so I couldn't manage to care about his fate. And there wasn't much about the story that really grabbed me. But I could certainly understand others liking it more than I did.
The Graveyard Rats (38 minutes)
Sometime in the early 20th century, a grave robber named Masson is in debt to some very dangerous people. (Which is just like the first story in this series, so it sort of stuck out for me that a similar premise would be used two episodes in a row.) He's not having much luck lately, because rats keep stealing bodies from their coffins before he can get to them. So he goes to an associate (Julian Richings) who works for the coroner, hoping to find some prospects among the recently deceased. He learns of a man who is going to be buried with some very valuable objects, including a sword. But once again, when he gets to the grave, the rats make off with the body. Fearing for his life if he doesn't pay off the people he owes, he follows the rats through a network of tunnels, despite his claustrophobia. I won't spoil all that he finds in those tunnels, but I will say I found this story legitimately scary. I also liked Masson somewhat, due to his rather erudite loquaciousness. So I cared more about his fate than I did the guy in the first story. And damn, that fate... not just the very end, but everything leading up to it... that was intense, and disturbing.
The Autopsy (58 minutes)
A man rushes into a mine, where he throws a mysterious sphere that apparently explodes, killing himself and everyone else in the vicinity. Later, a medical examiner named Dr. Carl Winters (F. Marray Abraham) comes to town and talks to his old friend, Sheriff Nate Craven (Glynn Turman). Nate tells him about people having been disappearing recently. His story leads up to the incident in the mine, which was caused by someone calling himself Joe Allen (though that's not his real name). When they're done talking, Nate drives Carl to a facility where he will perform a series of autopsies on the victims from the mine. As he does so, he records an audiotape for Nate to listen to later. And then, as he is about to start an autopsy on Allen, the man gets up off the table (which didn't surprise me). What comes next, I don't want to spoil, but I found it fascinating. It's hard for me to completely like the episode, because of how gross it is, what with the autopsies and everything, but despite that I couldn't help liking it, in a way. It's just a terribly inventive sci-fi horror story.
tek's rating: meh and a half
The Outside (64 minutes)
At Christmastime, an awkward woman named Stacey (Kate Micucci) gets invited to a secret Santa party with her coworkers. She receives a gift of a lotion called Alo Glo, and when she rubs it on her hands and face, she immediately breaks out in a rash. When she gets home, her husband, Keith (Martin Starr), is concerned about her. But she later sees a commercial for the product on TV, and hallucinates the man in the ad talking to her. He convinces her that the rash is just part of the process, so she orders more of the lotion. Over the next couple of days, the rash gets increasingly worse, the more she uses the lotion. Keith grows increasingly worried about her, and wants her to see a doctor. He tries to convince her that she doesn't need to change herself, and she doesn't take that well. I won't spoil any more of the plot, but it's all rather weird, and I'm not quite sure what to make of the ending.
tek's rating: ¼
Pickman's Model (63 minutes)
This is the only entry in the series that is based on a short story I had heard of before, even if I didn't know what the story was about. The original story was written by H.P. Lovecraft. It starts in 1909, when Will Thurber is an art student, who meets an older artist named Richard Pickman (Crispin Glover), whom he calls "Dickie". (Pickman has a thick accent of Boston or somewhere thereabouts, and I couldn't make out everything he said, but I got most of it.) Pickman's art disturbs Will, as it is based on dark and supernatural aspects of the world, not normally seen by most people. In 1926, Will is an established museum curator, with a wife named Rebecca and a young son named James. Pickman has become a renowned artist, and comes back into Will's life, which leads to Will having horrifying visions. He begins to go mad, and blames Pickman. And that's all I want to reveal of the plot, but the end is particularly dark. It's definitely a disturbing story, but I only sort of liked it. Which is usually the case for me with Lovecraft's work (or anything derived from it).
Dreams in the Witch House (62 minutes)
Based on another story by Lovecraft. It begins with twin brother and sister Walter and Epperley Gilman when they were children. Epperley dies, and Walter sees her ghost get dragged by an unseen force, through a portal that closes after her. Years later, Walter (now played by Rupert Grint, affecting a Boston accent), works for the Spiritualist Society, and hopes to find a way to reach the dimension of lost souls, to find his sister. He meets a Native American man who sells him a substance he can drink to temporarily enter that dimension, but every time he does, he gets dragged back to the real world before he can rescue Epperley's ghost. Eventually, he moves into a place called "the Witch House", where he once again drinks the substance, but is followed through the portal it opens by the spirit of a witch named Keziah Mason, as well as her familiar, a human-faced rat. Walter eventually does rescue Epperley, but the witch and the rat aren't done with him. And that's all I want to say about the plot. I thought it was a fairly good story, with good visual effects, though it didn't completely make sense to me. Which, again, is par for the course with Lovecraft.
tek's rating: mehhh
The Viewing (56 minutes)
In 1979, a super rich recluse named Lionel Lassiter (Peter Weller) invites four people whose work he admires (an astrophysicist, a writer, a musician, and a psychic) to his home. Most of the story is just talking among the group, which also includes a woman named Dr. Zahra (Sofia Boutella). Aside from talking, they all drink and do drugs. Finally, Lassiter takes them all to view an object, and he doesn't know what it is, but it's unearthly. I won't spoil how it ends, but I will say I didn't really get it. I vaguely enjoyed the conversation, which was sort of transcendental, but also sort of pretentious. Other than that, I just didn't feel like the story had any point at all.
The Murmuring (64 minutes)
In 1951, a married pair of ornithologists, Nancy and Edgar, go to stay in a remote house where they can study and record the flight patterns (or murmurations) of a certain species of birds. At first the couple seems happy together, doing the work that they love. But gradually it becomes clear that Nancy is not alright, and doesn't want to get too close to Edgar. It's been like this for a year, ever since their daughter died. Meanwhile, she begins seeing and hearing the ghosts of a woman and her son, who had died in the house decades ago. For a long time, she doesn't tell Edgar about this; in fact, at one point she bluntly says she doesn't believe in ghosts, even though she'd clearly seen them by then. Edgar grows increasingly distraught that his wife won't open up to him about how she feels, but when she finally tells him about the ghosts, he doesn't believe her. He thinks she's just been seeing things because she hasn't gotten much sleep for the past year. I won't say how it all ends, but it's a decent little ghost story, as well as a story about love and loss. I just wish I could have liked it more than I did. But it just... triggered a lot of anxiety in me.