Tentacles
Early Script-review for Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘At the Mountains of Madness’
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, as written by Del Toro and Robbins, is definitely aimed at those who “know” their Lovecraft from second- or third-hand: not directly from his stories, but from the way his work was re-imagined and grotesquely dumbed-down by the pop-culture. by this I mean his genre fiction “followers” (in name only, mostly), comics, video-games, RPG, heavy metal songs and the like. Those who perceive Lovecraft merely as an eccentric who wrote about some cool mega-monsters with lots of tentacles and slimy orifices are in for a treat here. Because that’s ALL of Lovecraft they’re gonna get. Those who expect a certain meaning and symbolism behind those “monsters” – those who expect philosophy – cosmic horror – loads of atmosphere, suspense, build-up… Well, not much of that, sadly.
It is a period piece: the frame story takes place in 1939, at the very beginning of World War 2 (quite unnecessary and silly parallel!), but the bulk of the film is made up of a flashback narration by the last survivor of the previous expedition to the South Pole from 1930. Of course, it is told to the chief of the new expedition going there… This being a classic, I guess there’s no need for going too much into details, you know the plot. Scientists go to Antarctica, find remnants of primaeval, alien creatures, reveal terrible things about the (pre)human history. In this version, it is somewhat simplified into: Scientists go to Antarctica, resurrect primaeval monsters, mayhem ensues.
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