All the horror shorts in Guillermo Del Toro’s hit Netflix series, ranked

Guillermo del Toro’s cabinet of curiosities The brand director and Netflix brings money into a somewhat outdated genre, the horror anthology, and wants to give it a new shine just before Halloween. The streaming service says del Toro “personally curated” the eight stories, all of which are available now, but he didn’t direct any himself and outsourced them to Jennifer Kent (The Babadook), Vincenzo Natali (Dice, Splice) and Ana Lily Amirpour (A girl goes home alone at night). The roughly hour-long episodes – many of which are based on short stories by HP Lovecraft or del Toro himself – vary wildly in their chosen scares, their tone and, unfortunately, their quality. Thankfully, they don’t have to be watched together or in any particular order, either, so you’re free to choose. Accordingly, here’s a guide to which episodes are really worth watching and, following Slate’s patented Scaredy Scale, a subjective bonus rating, which ones work best for the wimps among us. The episodes are listed in rough order of preference, from best to worst.

1. “The Autopsy,” Episode 3

David Prior (from new horror nerd favorite The Empty Man) stages another odd mix of genres in this tale of a man who disappears one night while hiking during a meteor shower, then reappears with a mysterious object which he takes down the mineshaft where he works – only to promptly blow everyone up to blow up. And that’s just the setup! We follow an interwoven story revolving around a doctor (F. Murray Abraham) who arrives to perform the titular quest on the dead miners. I won’t say more except that although I can’t confirm that this episode makes any sense, Hey boy is it crazy

Scaredy scale: 7/10 I say that lovingly, but this is one of the most disgusting hours of television I’ve ever seen. Had that been the subject of our individual Scaredy Scale rating, that would have been a Gore 10/10. God. And it is not saved black mirror-Levels of psychological horror, either. Exclusively for the degenerate.

2. “Pickman’s Model”, Episode 5

One of the Lovecraft adaptations by director Keith Thomas (the guard), this one has an unfair advantage as it casts Crispin Glover as the main antagonist, a haunted painter of horrifying Gothic images who leaves a dark impression on a fellow student (Ben Barnes). Years later, the men meet again, and the painting-induced hallucinations that the fellow student witnessed when he was young become all too real.

Scaredy scale: 6/10 One of the most traditional horror episodes with spooky motion effects, jump scares and all. In my eyes, the gore is more loving movie magic than genuinely gross, but if you don’t like gaping eye sockets or are new parents, you might skip it.

3. “The Inspection”, Episode 7

Perhaps the biggest WTF of the collection brings together a high-profile group of artists and scientists (including Eric André, Charlyne Yi and Steve Agee) at the behest of a mysterious man with deep pockets (Peter Weller) who carries them on with expensive scotch, weed and Peruvian cocaine , all leading to a finale that I’m pretty sure you won’t see coming. One can at least imagine some of these substances that went into the making of this very strange, but quite funny hour.

Scaredy scale: 5/10 It’s hard to say more without giving the episode away, but in the last 15 minutes the presenter’s intentions are becoming clear, and someone has seen the end of Hunter of the lost treasure.

4. “The Mumble”, episode 8

Two married ornithologists, who suffered a terrible loss a year earlier, travel to a home on a remote island to study the local bird population. Guess what?? The people who used to live in the house also suffered a terrible loss – and they never left! No surprise from Jennifer Kent, from Babadook Infamy, the episode has the most polished craftsmanship of the bunch, even if it’s mostly a ghost story by the numbers about maternal grief.

Scaredy scale: 5/10 No surprise either, this one has some classic haunted house scares, and the dead (and actually mumbling) kids will surely be too much for some. But all in all it’s relatively mild.

5. “Lot 36”, Episode 1

The episode (directed by Guillermo Navarro, a frequent cameraman for del Toro) is an early sign of the series’ half-baked ambitions for social relevance. It follows a bankrupt, xenophobic US veteran (Tim Blake Nelson) who buys storage space at auction. One unit apparently belonged to a man who did “terrible things” for the Nazis, and inside the man discovers some creepy old tomes – and a false door he really shouldn’t have opened. A decent start.

Scaredy scale: 5/10. Some creepy crawly creature as amends for bad behavior.

6. “Graveyard Rats,” Episode 2

Good sci-fi horror director Vincenzo Natali brings us this rather goofy tale of a tomb robber with a rat phobia (tough combo!) who goes for his highest score yet in an underground adventure of escalating horrors and regrets it. The charming practical effects go far.

Scaredy scale: 5/10 Slate has long had an internal debate about the following question: If you had the choice of falling into a rat-filled pit or having rats rain down on you from above, what would you choose? Let’s just say this episode offers a dramatization of both scenarios.

7. “Dreams in the Witch House,” episode 6

Another Lovecraft adaptation, this time by director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, dusk), follows a man (Rupert Grint, of Harry Potter Fame) dabbles in the supernatural to find his sister, who died when they were young and was kidnapped by mysterious spirits. He ends up in the eponymous witch’s house, where nothing good happens. The episode plays like a richly crafted homage to del Toro at the milder end of his dark fairy tales. It’s, in a word, meh.

Scaredy scale: 4/10 There’s plenty of witchcraft, tree kidnapping, and poor Ron Weasley’s terrible humiliation at the hands of humanoid rodents, but it’s all pretty PG-13.

8. “The Outside,” Episode 4

In what was, for me, the show’s biggest disappointment, an oddball bank teller (Kate Micucci) is convinced by her disgusting colleagues that she needs to see the world as a conventionally beautiful person. When one of them introduces her to a strange body cream being sold by a perma-promotional ghoul (Dan Stevens), an arduous body-horror odyssey unfolds. Director Ana Lily Amirpour has all the elements in place and delivers a few stylishly depraved sequences, but the rest is (sorry!) pretty superficial.

Scaredy scale: 4/10 It’s gross again and skincare nightmares are legion, but it’s nastier than urgent.