A Shudder Picture, Written and Directed by Nora Unkel.
An unsettlingly intimate portrayal of a brilliant artist at her most troubled, A Nightmare Wakes traces the tortured birth of a timeless masterwork and the rightful ascension of its creator to stand alongside her creation. We follow Mary Shelley (Alix Wilton Regan) at a key time in her life, where she suffers great tragedy and begins to question the loyalties of those around her. This leads her down a path of vivid hallucinations and horrifying scenarios that seep into her real life and relationships. The story of Frankenstein is both born from this, and played out through Mary Shelley, as writer/director Nora Unkel puts her own spin on an oft told tale.
The film takes place over the infamous summer where Mary, Percy Shelley (Giullian Yao Gioiello), Lord Byron (Philippe Bowgen), Claire Clairmont (Claire Glassford), and Dr. John Polidori (Lee Garrett) come together at Lake Geneva, and relationships are testes, and an icon is born.
The decision to tell the story of Mary and Percy Shelley as a gothic romance feels like the correct and natural step, specifically when you look at this time in their lives, but Unkel takes it a step further here and actually has the story and themes of the novel Mary will go on to write, be the things that factor into their lives and the story here. It blurs the line between biopic of Mary Shelley, and adaptation of her novel, and at times you are in the same place as Mary as you don’t know what is real.
The film is very well made on a technical level, with some strong direction from Nora Unkel leading from the front and helping to make up for her uneven screenplay. There are some really striking shots in the film, and even though at times it feels too dark to properly see, a lot of the cinematography is very impressive. Other aspects that really stand out are the production design, really adding an almost haunted house feel to things, and the score throughout, that really builds up the suspense in the right moments.
As well as the real tension and gothic horror atmosphere that the film creates, it also has real eroticism running throughout it, which really adds an extra layer to things. There are multiple sex scenes, and all of them add a fresh dynamic to the relationship between these characters. As Mary’s psyche seems to be crumbling and her desire growing, there is a particular scene where she pictures a man performing oral sex on her, only for it to be revealed as her imagination and she is just masturbating. It is at once an incredibly erotic scene, but then also one quickly tinged with horror and confusion, and is good summary of the final act of the film.
Although it is an ambitious and often inventive way of telling this story, the main issue is that the story decisions lead to Mary Shelley’s genius being diminished, and her creation of Frankenstein being whittled down to little more than the ramblings of a mad woman. In reality, Frankenstein was a game changing literary work that created an entire genre and changed the world of storytelling in many ways, and you in no way would take that away or give her any credit for it if you were only going off this film.
Overall, this is an interesting spin on the traditional biopic that really tackles grief, love, desire, and creation head on, with a horror lens. It is compelling in places and leaves you thinking of it once you have finished it, but a weak screenplay and a real feeling that the protagonist was failed leads to it not being able to fully achieve everything it wants to.
Rating = 3/5
Howe's World of Film and TV 