Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 4 “The Outside” Review: Keeps The Suspension Somewhat Poised Between Reality and Dream | Guillermo del Toro’s
Cast: Kate Micucci, Martin Starr, Dan Stevens
Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
A talent that, as we will see in our review of the fourth episode “The Outside” of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, returns to fully shine, like the skin of the protagonist Stacey, played by an excellent Kate Micucci, after a beauty treatment that must satisfy the requirements that the company imposes to be recognized. A theme that in The Outside, this is the title of the episode, is courageously transformed into an author’s body horror.
We had to wait for three episodes of fluctuating levels, with several merits but also with some shortcomings that undermined the overall result, before finding the first real jewel of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. The first not only seems to give meaning to the operation of the series but also to stage a real authorial vision, so much to justify and give credit to the name behind the camera. Ana Lily Amirpour, a director who had placed herself in the spotlight thanks to her debut film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and who with the following films had confirmed her character (although the last Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon had more than a few problems).
Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 4 “The Outside” Review: The Story
Stacey is a woman unlike any other. She is not beautiful (at least not as her beauty of her is understood among her colleagues, who adore make-up, big breasts, and surgery), she is clumsy, and she has passions that we would dare to say are special. The fact remains that Stacey does not know what her beauty is: passionate and a practitioner of taxidermy, she stuffs animals, making them perfect for eternity. Pearly eyes, entrails removed and replaced with threads, carefully washed: Stacey’s animals correspond to the ideal of beauty on which she would like to be mirrored. Which can finally happen when, during a night spent in front of the TV and after using a face cream that caused a reaction on her skin, Stacey decides to change.
Convinced by the commercial that seems to be aimed directly at her, Stacey orders a case of cosmetics, which do not stop irritating her skin, and which – according to her partner – are brainwashing her. It will not be enough to stop the achievement of our protagonist’s goal: to be beautiful like the others, to stop being different, and to be accepted and envied. It is a plot, that of The Outside, an explanatory title of the theme of the episode, presented as always by Guillermo del Toro, ready to immediately explain the metaphor (and without however being able to deny the fascination of the vision) that speaks to our contemporaneity, even if referring to an aesthetic and a taste for storytelling linked to the Eighties. There are many references to Stephen King’s classics (Carrie above all), to those of Clive Barker (Hellraiser applied to personal aesthetics) and obviously to Cronenberg’s body horror, expertly mixed by Amirpour who gives the episode an unexpected and surprising quality.
Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 4 “The Outside” Review and Analysis
How Much Need a Personality Behind the Camera? We tell you immediately: a lot. Always, but above all in horror cinema, where the stories correspond to topoi by now well recognizable and already told, but which, with the right director, are capable of receiving new lifeblood. This is the case of The Outside which best welcomes the challenge of the Netflix series and offers an episode in which the voice of Ana Lily Amirpour is not only present but is also the sine qua non of its success. Able to link the different inspirations, to mix with light giving an almost pop look to the episode (after all we are talking about television and beauty, right?), To combine the purest and most mysterious horror with an absurd and comic aftertaste, the director creates a unique vision, distinguishing itself from what has already been seen previously in the same series.
A way of staging history and belonging to a textbook anthology series that makes this fourth episode one of the spearheads of the operation. For the courage, for the theme dealt with (establishing a dialogue with the present that was missing in the three previous episodes), but also for an ending that does not have the flavour of already seen. At that point it does not matter if the narrative plot is not too original: the voice is. Kate Micucci’s interpretation strikes like a stab in the brain, a perfect outsider who creates a bond with the viewer from the first shot. Embarrassed at first and then a victim of herself and her madness, until she transforms and mutates, from a caterpillar to a butterfly, Micucci constantly makes herself credible, which is not an easy job in a story like this.
The feeling, at the end of the vision, is not only of having found oneself in front of a very particular talent but of having witnessed an unforgettable performance, which gives life to a character who, once discovered, will struggle to overshadow. Also thanks to a particularly successful ending, where a long close-up, with a distorted lens, once again strips away the long-desired ideal. It will be up to the viewer to look a little beyond the surface, going beyond The Outside of things. Isn’t that what curious people do? Isn’t that how hidden horror is discovered? The fourth episode of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities is the first real gem of the series. Despite a not too original subject, The Outside wins thanks to the unique style of director Ana Lily Amirpour that gives character and a vision of her all of her, justifying the operation of the series. Totally in part the protagonist Kate Micucci, a character difficult to forget.
Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 4 “The Outside” Review: The Last Words
The Outside keeps the suspension somewhat poised between reality and dream, never fully answering the question and letting the story proceed on a trail of pure ambiguity. Extensive use of fish eyes, distorted images and contrasting visions that create a magnificently immersive and evocative effect. The most cutting, cynical and ferocious from an intellectual point of view collected in this anthology. Charged and inspired. More grotesque than gothic but certainly far more terrifying than we have seen so far.
