I haven’t written anything in quite a while, despite now having an ever-growing list of things to write about. It’s quite hilarious, to be honest. Back in May, I was very motivated to sit down and type away, but I didn’t have any good idea what the hell to type about. So I started a list. And now this list has quite a few entries, and there were indeed some moments in the last two months at which I thought to myself: “Hm, I really should write something for the blog. And I do actually have some post ideas on my list, so yeah, why not.” But I never got around to it. Maybe the “really should” part was the problem.

But anyway, I’m rambling. To ease myself back into it, I thought I’d start with a rather easy one and write about a piece of cinematography I enjoyed tremendously.

I watched Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities some time ago, and while I liked almost all of the episodes / short films / whatever you want to call them, there was one that really stood out to me: The Autopsy, based on the short story by Michael Shae.¹

It is set in the aftermath of a peculiar mining accident. One of the miners seems to have brought some kind of weird explosive with him one day, detonating it in one of the tunnels, killing himself and a score of his colleagues. Following this incident, the local police launches an investigation into the matter, discovering more and more strange and disturbing details. In an attempt to shine some light onto this grisly case, a coroner is consulted by the local sheriff to examine the corpses of the miners. And so, this coroner, an old friend of the sheriff’s, begins his autopsy at sundown, dissecting the bodies one by one, audiotaping his every move, and, as of yet, utterly ignorant of the unspeakable horrors the night would come to hold.

This short is one of the very few visual works of horror fiction that really appeals to my particular taste in the written version of said genre, combining the suspense and mystery of a criminal investigation with elements of truly Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Instead of losing itself in gory visual details, as, in my opinion, many horror movies tend to, it manages to create and maintain an eerie atmosphere from the beginning to the end, telling a compelling and wonderfully intricate story about friendship, death and otherworldly horrors from beyond.

So, yeah, if you are, like me, an enjoyer of weird tales whispered in the darkness (and if your stomach is strong enough to withstand several autopsies and some self-mutilation), I’d highly recommend you give this one a watch.