A Nightmare Wakes

A pregnant woman walking into a lake opens another take on the creation of the creation of the Frankenstein story. There isn’t that much new truth be told regarding this story, only in the manner that it is told. So long as the essential story is more or less kept to then pretty much anything can be done.

Which means that the essentials are here. The 1816 Lake Geneva setting, Lord Byron (Philippe Bowgen), Dr John Polidori (Lee Garrett), Percy Bysshe Shelley (Giullian Yao Gioiello) and Mary Shelley (Alix Wilton Regan) plus her Claire Clairmont (Claire Glassford) taking on Byron’s challenge for them to write a horror story. However there are lavish parties and decadence as the film is set out over a number of months and not confined to the infamous night.

The parties (and thankfully Byron) are in the background with the story concentrating on Shelley and Mary as she drafts the novel. The story begins to obsess her with visualisations of the characters and scenes breaking into her life, is Shelley in her mind Frankenstein? As Shelley gets more concerned about her so he blames her writing for her mental collapse, that becomes physical when she realises that she is pregnant.

Ignoring the advice of Polidori and the objections of Shelley she continues to write while the other two continue their dalliances with the extreme with Byron and friends. The hypocrisy is palpable as is Shelley’s condescending attitude to Mary’s writing and to her as a person with aggressive action over the manuscript.

This is a psychological take on the story with little in the way of violence but plenty of activity in the mind as Mary’s fictional and real worlds intertwine to create an at times cloudy, though not incoherent narrative. Nevertheless, with her debur feature, writer and director Nora Unkel shifting the focus away from Byron and the like, has concentrated on the Mary and Shelley and their troubled relationship.

What we have is a much more interesting and challenging story where Mary has to counter Shelley’s character as he continues to booze and possibly have affairs while in an affair. It’s a difficult one for Mary as she is also the other woman, having lost a baby and now pregnant. Shelley’s confusion is compounded by the news that his pregnant wife has committed suicide killing the unborn baby in the process.

Having shunted Bowgen’s stereotypical portrayal of Byron to one side, its Yao Gioiello and Wilton Regan who are left to carry the film. And they do more through technique than by generating warmth or empathy towards their characters. It’s clear that Mary’s experiences drive the creation on of her novel. These are by and large not good the nadir being an unpleasant scene with a drunk Shelley forcing himself on Mary with what he sees as his conjugal right but is actually rape.

Unkel’s ever moving camera with accompanying shifts in mood and perspective give the film a hallucinogenic air, almost wilfully weird and strange. As with the acting it’s a technical feat that is impressive and there are plenty of very good ideas within. It just pointedly fails to engage on a more emotional level.

A Nightmare Awakes is on Shudder now.