[WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 2, Graveyard Rats.]
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities finally dropped on Netflix with two disturbing episodes, both satiating every inch of a horror fan's insatiable hunger for the macabre. In Episode 2, Graveyard Rats, a grave robber takes viewers to the hell of claustrophobia, leading to his ultimate demise.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats – Not for the Faint of Heart
David Hewlett plays Masson in Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 2, Graveyard Rats, which is based on the Henry Kuttner short story.
Masson first appears in Cabinet of Curiosities' Graveyard Rats, where he witnesses two young men robbing a recently deceased woman's grave. He chastises and reprimands them for disregarding the significance of graves and cemeteries.
However, after the two men leave, Masson enters the coffin himself in order to take the remaining valuables from the deceased. He examines her teeth as well because, in his line of work, gold teeth are the most lucrative.
Masson makes a dishonest living by pawning off the items he steals from graves, but he has a debt to a man who will kill him if he doesn't pay it. The rats in the cemetery started stealing the items from the dead, according to Masson, who claims that they are reducing his profits. He implores the man to give him more time to pay off his debt, but the man declines.
Prior to this, Masson struck a deal with a nearby mortician, allowing him to check the bodies in the morgue for gold teeth or silver fillings. Masson visits the morgue to see if any of the cadavers contain anything valuable in a last-ditch effort to pay off his debt.
The mortician Dooley, played by Julian Richings, tells him he has nothing for him, but Masson notices a curtained-off area. Masson pushes past Dooley to find a man with several gold teeth. Masson tries to extract the teeth right away, but Dooley pushes him away and says he can have them after the funeral. He warns Dooley that the rats will get to him before he can extract the teeth, but Dooley is unconcerned.
Masson's Desperation Leads Him to a Dark Discovery
Masson hears rats squeaking when he opens the coffin after the man's body has been buried. He then observes as the body slides through a hole the rats have chewed. When Masson dives after the body, he finds a network of tunnels.
Masson pushes farther into the tunnels in an effort to remove the valuables from the corpse until one caves in beneath him. He fires a shot from his gun to try and scare the rats away as they swarm around him. He only succeeds in shooting a hole in his foot, though.
As Masson turns a corner while still crawling toward the corpse, a huge, rat-like monster emerges. He fires at the creature, but it only sustains injuries. Masson scrambles more quickly to escape the enormous rodent's itch on his arm. He feels the ground sway beneath him. He tumbles into a cavern filled with all the bodies' bones that the rats had gnawed onto.
The Tables Turn Horrifically for Masson in Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats
Masson initially feels he has struck gold because the majority of the skeletons contain jewelry and gold teeth. But one item of jewelry, in particular, captures his eye. Masson tries to remove a gold pendant from one of the skeletons pinned to the wall.
The skeleton, however, comes to life and growls, "MINE!" at Masson and tries to reclaim the jewelry. Masson scrambles away from the necklace, returning to the maze of tunnels. He eventually spots a light in the distance and crawls gradually toward it, thinking he's discovered a way out.
When he comes closer, he sees it's not light shining into the tunnels. Instead, his beam had been pinging off a silver plate from inside a coffin, the same silver plate from his target cadaver's coffin.
Masson had crawled into an empty coffin and was now trapped inside to die. Rats start pouring into the coffin, and Masson screams in terror.
The next scene shows the tomb robbers from the beginning of the episode, opening the coffin to find Masson's dead body with the stolen necklace neatly put around his neck.
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Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities will release two episodes a day from Oct. 25 to Oct. 28 on Netflix.
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