Summary
A poignant and horrifying tale about one woman and her desperate attempts to fit in.
We recap the Netflix Horror anthological series Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities season 1, episode 4, “The Outside,” which contains spoilers and the ending.
“The Outside” is the fourth installment of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities horror anthology series. This thought-provoking episode is centered around a young woman (Kate Micucci) who’s desperate to fit in with her work colleagues. Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, this episode is based on a short story written by Emily Carroll. “The Outside” is particularly disturbing as it deals with real problems women face and the consequences impossible beauty standards can have on someone’s sense of self-worth. It shows just how far a woman is willing to go to fit in with her peers. And the result is anything but pretty.
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities season 1, episode 4 recap
Set around Christmas, “The Outside” opens with a young woman named Stacy who sits in front of the television with a microwave meal. Anxious about being home alone and thinking she heard someone break into the house, she calls her police officer boyfriend, Keith (Martin Starr), who tries reassuring her. From the beginning, it’s clear Stacy is a very insecure woman and overly reliant on her boyfriend’s support.
Things aren’t any better at her work either. She appears as an outsider among her bank teller female colleagues who spend their days gossiping and ignoring Stacy. So when she’s invited to her colleague Gina’s Secret Santa party, Stacy is both surprised and overjoyed. Keith, on the other hand, is a bit suspicious that his girlfriend’s workmates would invite her to anything, as they’d previously ignored her.
Our heroine is a bit of an odd character. Her favorite hobby is taxidermy. To prepare for the party, she shoots and stuffs a duck to give Gina as a present. While poor Stacy is as out of place as she can be at the actual party, where the other women openly discuss sex-related topics, it gets even more hard to watch when she gives Gina the taxidermy duck gift. The awkwardness of that scene is enough to give the viewer second-hand embarrassment on Stacy’s behalf.
Gina, ever the gracious host, politely thanks Stacy for the dead duck, before getting everyone’s attention back to the Alo Glo lotions she had bought them. Alo Glo is meant to be the best moisturizer currently on the market and all the women are excited to start using it. Of course, Stacy can’t catch a break. As she mimics her colleagues and applies the lotion to her face, she immediately has some sort of allergic reaction, making her skin go red.
Back at home, a defeated Stacy can’t sleep, so she engages in some late-night TV watching. Things get weird when the Alo Glo infomercial comes on and the slick television salesman (Dan Stevens) starts directly addressing her through the screen. The slick sales guy instructs Stacy to keep using the lotion, despite the negative skin reaction it gives her. According to him, this is the only way for her to become pretty and fit in with the women at work.
Desperate to denounce her outcast status and to become beautiful, Stacy listens to her TV screen and orders more Alo Glo. The more she uses the lotion, the worse her skin’s redness gets. Keith is becoming increasingly worried and even offers to take her to the doctor. Stacy refuses medical help and insists she needs to change. She proceeds to accuse Keith of not understanding what she’s going through because he’s a man.
In the couple’s basement, the bottles of lotion seem to take a life of their own as the lids open by themselves. Initially scared by the phenomena, not to mention that her entire body is now covered in bright red rashes, Stacy considers giving up on her dream. But the slick Alo Glo sales guy appears on her TV screen once more and convinces her to keep at it. He promises that she’ll soon be fully transformed and achieve the beauty she so desires.
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities season 1, episode 4 ending
Eventually, at the end of Cabinet of Curiosities season 1, episode 4, all the Alo Glo lotion in the basement morphs into a shiny humanoid creature. After a disturbing scene where Stacy kisses and caresses the Alo Glo creature, she attacks poor Keith with a scalpel. Keith tried telling her how much he loved her and how in his eyes, she was perfect. Stacy repays his love by murdering him and stuffing him like one of her taxidermy animals.
After finishing Keith off, Stacy goes to the bathroom where the Alo Glo humanoid poured itself into the bathtub. Our heroine bathes in the lotion and emerges as beautiful as she always wanted to be. Her skin is perfect, her teeth are white, and the lazy eye that was plaguing her is now gone. She gets dressed and puts some make-up on before leaving a now-stuffed Keith on the sofa and heads for the bank.
At work, all her colleagues are amazed at her transformation. Stacy looks and acts like she’s one of them. She wastes no time engaging in idle gossip and the episode ends with a now-transformed woman laughing as she stares down at the camera. At the end of episode 4, the slick Alo Glo sales guy on her TV was right, she got the looks she always wanted. Yet, in her selfishness, she also lost (read: killed) the one person who was always on her side. Maybe the way she awkwardly laughs in the final scene is a sign of her finally realizing what she’s done? Or maybe she is starting to see how meaningless the idle gossip truly if. It’s hard to tell if Stacy ends the episode truly happy or not, but I believe the ambiguity was left there on purpose.
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