Cabinet of interests: the end of the trip explained (more)
Warning! Contains spoilers for episode 7 of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, The Viewing.
Episode 7 of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix is a strange and tense horror story whose ending, “The View,” may require some explaining. The penultimate episode of del Toro’s anthology horror stories, “The Viewing” follows four men, each an expert in their own field, invited to the mansion of the mysterious Lionel Lassiter (Peter Weller). Accordingly, Charlotte (Charlyne Yi), Targ (Michael Therriault), Randall (Eric André) and Guy (Steve Agee) focus on space and panspermia, ESP and spirituality, music and literature.
Overall, The View is a cautionary tale that examines the pride of those who seek to own and control what they do not understand. Furthermore, del Toro shows who pays the price when the rich and powerful overstep their bounds. Both of these ideas are underscored by tension, disturbing visuals, and a blaring score that spirals to the horror of The View’s characters and slowly spiraling out of control.
How Lionel chose his guests
At the start of The Viewing, Lionel’s four guests reveal that although they each have very different backgrounds, they all appeared on late-night talk shows to discuss their various specialties. This shows that Lionel is not only looking for experts in specific fields, but also focusing on those who have some kind of public presence. More importantly, however, Lionel sought out those he perceived as open-minded, visionaries whom he especially valued, notably calling Guy the greatest novelist of the day and openly praising Randall’s musical work as transcendent. Ultimately, Lionel of the Cabinet of Curiosities believed that the figures he considered enlightened had the best bet to understand the artifact he hid in his home, whether through the universal language of art, with Guy and Randall, or through science, Targ and Charlotte. Since he already suspects the object is some kind of extraterrestrial life and hopes to find a way to communicate with it, this also explains why Lionel turns to Targ and Charlotte’s expertise.
Why everyone was doing so many drugs on The Viewing
If Lionel wanted to use every skill of his guest in the Cabinet of Curiosities, it might seem strange that he would encourage everyone to take the powerful substances as soon as they arrived. This action in “Bakhish” can be interpreted in several ways. Lionel displayed his wealth and prestige in front of his guests with his private home, expensive possessions, and personal knowledge of his guests. So each of these elements was a coup to better affect them. In addition, Lionel believed that having everyone upgraded would allow them to gain better “revelation” and better understand or communicate with the alien entity he was protecting. On a more meta level, making sure all the characters are completely drunk to varying degrees adds another layer of tension around them, making each of them perceptually insecure and vulnerable to the creature at the end of the episode.
Why Targ and Guy die at the end of the review
When the group accidentally awakens the creature from the otherworldly rock in the Cabinet of Curiosities ending, “The Viewing”, everyone is immediately hit with a terrifying, loud noise – but Targ and Guy cope. This can be attributed to the types of characters they are: in the Cabinet of Curiosities cast, Targ was a spiritual psychic, presumably more sensitive to the creature’s influence on its surroundings, explaining why it was the first to die after the creature died. was released. Meanwhile, Guy died facing Targ, exploding where Targ’s flesh melted. This portrays Guy’s uncompromising stubbornness and resistance to the creature, traits he displayed earlier during the group’s conversation. It perishes because it cannot adapt to the existence of the creature.
Why is Lionel swallowed by a monster?
The deaths of Targ and Gai contrast with the deaths of Lionel and his doctor, Doctor Jara (Sofia Boutella). When Targ and Gai perish without ever touching the creature, Dr. Jara deliberately puts his hand in it, and Lionel’s body is completely absorbed to give the creature a new form. Specifically, Lionel’s death is poetic and the inevitable end of the story, as this ending of the Cabinet of Curiosities is explained from the beginning of the episode, del Toro asks what happens when the collector collects. “The Viewing” features Lionel’s personal music, Dr. It brings that home home by describing how even people like Jara take pride in the exclusivity of what they can have. However, he is eventually captured by an alien creature, turning Lionel’s greed into a fatal flaw that leads to his and his guests’ downfall. His pride in thinking he can own and control everything, from his guests to the mysterious presence in his home, leads him to lose it all in the episode finale.
The real meaning of the end of the review
While Cabinet of Curiosities’ “The Viewing” doesn’t have much to call a conventional plot, it makes the episode a fascinating character study. In this case, the focus is on the personality of Lionel, who encourages the other characters of the Cabinet of Curiosities to come together and face the unknown. But eventually the stranger destroys the group, leaving only Charlotte and Randall to escape. These two were the only characters willing to really deal with ambiguity in their respective fields, as Charlotte discussed the principle of ambiguity in her work and Randal the theory that everyone has a void inside them, the lack of meaning inherent in the human condition. they have to fight in their lives. Their willingness to face the unknown allows them to escape while paying the price for their arrogance, instead of insisting that they have it and can control it, like Lionel.
As with many of Del Toro’s horror films, the entity is more than just a creepy creature. Lionel’s transformation into a wolf emphasizes that human pride, especially human pride endowed with power and means, is a real monster. The arrival of a Lionel-alien hybrid in a town shows that he is convinced that Lionel will destroy the inhabitants if he has even half of the creature’s pride and destructive abilities. This leaves the episode on an unsettlingly uncertain note, never fully resolving the tension that Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 7, “The View,” sets up from the start by forcing the audience and the characters to struggle. I do not understand.
