User blog comment:Mikemacdee/Best of Lovecraft (and Other Thoughts)/@comment-25941663-20171011210117/@comment-28266772-20171012084411

It's a struggle for movie makers to pull it off. So much of Lovecraft was in the words and he wasn't very interested in petty human problems. I think Carpenter's apocalypse trilogy (Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness, The Thing) are the three best Lovecraftian films I've ever seen. In the Mouth of Madness comes damn close to being a full adaptation but it's also very meta and very much about 'story telling' as a whole. But for me, Carpenter is the supreme king of translating HPL's aesthetic to screen while placing the right amount of emphasis on cosmological horror.

For direct adaptations you can find From Beyond by Stuart Gordon. Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Compton are so much fun in that! But, again, you won't find a movie that translates HPL's work directly. There's a BDSM subplot and a much more character-driven storyline that make it distinctly 'un-Lovecraft'. Personally I love Re-animator (by the same gang) but it's so far gone from Lovecraft's ethic--not to mention an adaptation of the least Lovecraft story ever written (except the romance one)--that it barely counts. I will say though, Re-animator does feature a scene where a severed head gives cunnilingus so, ya know, that's gotta count for something.

As for Del Toro's adaptation? Man, I gotta be honest, I am very happy that failed. Del Toro is okay, at best. Pan's Labyrinth is his only legitimately great movie, the rest are never better than 7/10. The guy raped Hellboy over a barrel to make those two films and everything he makes is all style without substance. I always say that Zack Snyder is a great cinematographer but an awful director. Well Del Toro is a superb special effects artist and a terrible director. There is no way on God's green Earth that Del Toro would have had what it takes to adapt In the Mountains of Madness successfully. He would have made it look great, for sure, but everything else in there (like characters and plot) would have just been lukewarm porridge.