Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 8 “The Murmuring” Review: A Bright Ending to A Very Dark Series | Guillermo del Toro’s
Cast: Andrew Lincoln, Essie Davis, Hannah Galway
Director: Jennifer Kent
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
In our review of the eighth episode of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, we will focus on this ghost story that appears consistent with Kent’s authorial path, but we cannot help but pull the strings of the entire series as well, because the choice of this story as the last story does not seem so casual. Dawn always comes after the night. And after four days of horror stories, after seven scary stories, here comes the eighth, in its way consistent with the desire to make us viewers feel some thrills, but also brighter and more hopeful after so much nihilism and death. Directed by Jennifer Kent, The Murmuring is the light side of the last diptych, in contrast to the previous episode directed by Cosmatos.
It is up to Jennifer Kent to close Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, again on October 28, with the transposition of a ghost story written by Del Toro himself, The Murmuring. A closing perhaps a little subdued for what is the most exciting and trying episode, but at the same time also one of those that could leverage the impressionable audience more. The protagonists are a couple of ornithologists, Nancy and Edgar, who go to a place isolated from the rest of the world to be able to closely study the behaviour of sandpipers. Awaiting them is a house as beautiful as it is ancient, which the keepers of the nearby shore have the couple find to make their isolated stay more comfortable, bringing supplies of food every week.
Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 8 “The Murmuring” Review: The Story
Nancy and Edgar Bradley are a very active married couple who are recognized in their profession. They are two ornithologists who have studied (and continue to do so) the flight of birds. With a lot of cutting-edge technologies (for what is the standard of the 1950s), the couple discovered how birds in flight create shapes, almost aimed at delivering a message to those who observe them. A new opportunity to study the behaviour of sandpipers will be the excuse to travel to Nova Scotia and live in an old house. But the rooms of the house, the objects and other strange presences inside will bring to light the mourning never elaborated by the couple and never even dormant.
It is a story with a linear path, but no less dense and interesting, the one embodied by del Toro himself in the subject and subsequently reworked by Jennifer Kent. The director seems to be particularly at ease with these themes (also present in her way in her debut work Babadook) and gives life to a story that is not afraid of fear and a good dose of tension, but which focuses mostly on human nature, silences and the unspoken between spouses. And it is here that the murmurs of birds (as the movements they make in flight are called) become the murmurs of the protagonists, interrupted and whispered voices, which force them not to express their inner abyss.
Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 8 “The Murmuring” Review: And Analysis
This story where silences and unspoken emotions help create tension and atmosphere needed a truly convincing pair of protagonists. Fortunately, Andrew Lincoln and Essie Davis can bear all the weight of the story on their shoulders, giving life to sequences that in their simplicity can express a lot with little. Kent’s direction is particularly effective both in the most psychological moments, focusing everything on close-ups to try to dig what cannot be read on the surface, and in the darkest and most horrifying moments, where the rhythm and tension rise. The result is an episode directed with skill, which yields only a few too long (a defect that we have found in several episodes of this series) and which seems to blur the more centred and pulsating focus of the story.
Perhaps this last episode, in one of its final scenes, offers one of the best moments of the series. In its simplicity, a liberating, sweet and loving dialogue, it proves to be one of the most emotional sequences, more than all the scares and fears that the Cabinet of Curiosities wanted us to discover in eight episodes. And it is no coincidence that it is precisely in The Murmuring that we find an optimistic ending, different from most (if not all, sometimes it depends on the points of view) of the episodes as if to regain confidence in life even in places and moments when death seems to reign over us. Kent’s ghost story works precisely because he uses the horror genre as a metaphor for growth and renewal. This is how fears are faced, without giving in to nightmares, but with the strength to wake up.
The two are mostly engaged in studying the behaviours of birds, uncovering oddities about the house. The couple, however, more than a husband and a wife, seems almost two old friends, worn out by a common pain that neither of us can find the words to express. While Edgar, more passionate than her, looks for a way to get closer to her wife, Nancy is completely closed in her world, where only her sandpipers can give her joy. And it is precisely in attentive listening to the birds that Nancy will notice something strange in that house, something about her past that has not been told to her and that somehow binds her in such an intimate, so painful but also horrendous way.
The smell of death, the call of horror, a scary and nostalgic sound, like the screams of a mother on the verge of despair. Jennifer Kent returns to tell about motherhood, but this time she does it with an almost poignant tenderness, managing to balance very well the element of suspense and restlessness with that depicted by the emptiness inside her, the protagonist of her. The silence and the darkness are exploited very well, managing the tension from start to finish. Even impressing and, perhaps, managing to jump off the sofa or chair for a few seconds. At the same time, a family tale also unfolds a story that is even more terrible than a hypothetical otherworldly presence.
A story perhaps too delicate to close an anthology of this type, but which nevertheless touches the genre of the ghost story in a very interesting way, disturbing and moving. Ghosts of the past that ask to be faced before being released. They ask to be let go, forgiven, to have a second chance and above all to give the living a second chance. Surely the story with the most positive ending among the eight visas that make up Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (but also of horrors). After all, mourning, pain and loss are also part of the human being. And just as some face them by spreading more pain, some decide to give themselves a second chance, in their way, over time.
Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 8 “The Murmuring” Review: The Last Words
Arriving at the end of the series, the eighth episode of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities gives the pleasant feeling of a worthy ending, despite a fluctuating series that has not always met expectations. Here Jennifer Kent bases a simple but dense story, where the light seems to overcome the darkness and where the horror genre takes an original and more internal drift. Andrew Lincoln and Essie Davis carry the weight of the episode, not always in focus, but certainly emotional.
