I've always thought Byron and Percy Shelly were assholes and if anything this film goes some way to confirming this.
The plot is constructed around the infamous time the Shelley's spent in Italy where Mary wrote Frankenstein.
Mary Shelly is buried about two miles from where I live so I was looking forward to this as an insight into the writing of one of the most important novels of the era.
Frankenstein and the birth of Victorian gothic writing laid the foundation for 20th century horror, it's importance can't be overstated. Films about books being written are always a bit tricky. Watching someone have ideas and write them down is not exactly riveting.
So A Nightmare Awakes attempts to weave the tragedy of the Shelley's private life into the creative process. The question this film asks is how much did Shelley's domestic instability, deaths of her children, sexual impropriety of her partner and husband affect her development of the novel?
It's difficult to imagine how anyone could have been psychologically affected by this level of personal tragedy, the film implies that Shelly was suffering from a deeper psychological issues which pure speculation. Shelley's world is certainly an unhealthy one.
The problem is the film takes too many liberties with Shelley's already troubled story and so feels a bit exploitive. Percy Shelley's death is the best example of this, trying to put a supernatural spin on his drowning Percy did die by drowning but it was a boating accident.
In the end this falls halfway between biopic and supernatural suspense. It doesn't really do with of those things well enough either.
