Lot 36 (A Cabinet of Curiosities short on Netflix)

Genre: Horror
Rating: TV-MA
Warnings: Gore, Nazis, some Racism, Body Horror

The characterisation is a little heavy-handed, with our unlikeable protagonist being quickly revealed as a racist, right-wing, bitter man who believes himself to be the only real victim of hard times. However, the other characters are more balanced and he's far from unbelievable.

The opening scene moves from a TV dinner to some unpleasant meat or taxidermy gore. Luckily, that's the last of it, and the body horror starts at a clear moment. The racism is spoken only, and the nazis only show up in photographs and conversation.

The setting, a sprawling storage unit building, is a maze-like collection of corridors and storage units: A dingy and confusing location that fits perfectly into the liminal spaces that are popular in horror at the moment. In parallel to the seemingly endless and identical corridors is the constant building of tension. With the protagonist's racism, each other character seems like a potential problem. Will the black storage building owner snap after what is clearly years of disrespect? Will the Spanish-speaking woman who openly curses him get her revenge? Will the mysterious and shady German collector of the arcane betray him?

When the reveal finally comes, and with it the body horror, it hangs in the air for a moment, letting the audience really savour it. As the opening short in an anthology, it brings strong promise. A balance of what feels like an age-old cautionary tale with a very current setting, strong acting and incredible quality visuals bodes incredibly well for the shorts that follow. It is curated and introduced by the body-horror (and scales-forward) Guillermo del Toro, so while he isn't the director of any or the writer of most of the scripts and short stories, he is happy to put his name and face centre stage. Lot 36 is his script and his short story, and is definitely well worth watching for any horror fan.