I want to preface by saying that of course Guillermo Del Toro’s At The Mountains of Madness may suck. It may be truly awful. It may do the source material no justice, or even completely miss the Lovecraftian mark. All of that said, it’s not likely, and it certainly can’t be determined now because an early script puts “relatively little stress on atmosphere.”
Ghouls on Film’s Dejan Ognjanovic has apparently gotten his hands on the script and, while I take great issue with his declarative assessment of what the film will be based on a script from who-knows-when, that will be changed who-knows-how many times before production, it’s obvious he comes at from a place of genuine love for the source material. His overall attitude is that the film will play “like a Hellboy movie without Hellboy, with a light dose of Carpenter’s The Thing,” which is what a number of us are hoping for, methinks. He also mentions that the script reads like a definitive R-rated film, and is packed to absolute capacity with monsters of all kinds.
Unfortunately, Ognjanovic also believes that all build-up and atmosphere has been stripped from the story in favor of action, and pop-Lovecraft adventure. Complaints that the script focuses too much on acting and relegates the mythology to a few lines of dialogue could certainly be valid, but any determination that Del Toro won’t be bringing the atmospheric pain is premature at best.
There are a number of possible spoilers that I won’t touch on here, but Ghouls On Film goes into great detail, and you’re free to read more there. Until then, healthily keep your expectation in-check if you’re a hardcore fan of Lovecraftian canon as, at the very least, it seems Guillermo will not be slavishly devoted to the source material with his long-awaited crack at Cthulhu’s world.
(via Cinematical)