Content Warning: This content contains mentions of sexual assault
A Nightmare Wakes tells the story of Mary Shelley, and the writing of the science-fiction masterpiece Frankenstein, through a surprisingly unique lens. Under the direction of Nora Unkel, the story of Mary and Percy Shelley is plotted both as a biopic and as its own adaptation of the novel, with the couple’s fraught relationship mirroring Shelley’s dark tale. Mary Shelley, played by Alex Wilton Regan, acts as both monster and creator, imagining a fictional Victor Frankenstein, that is played by Giullian Yao Gioiello who also plays Percy Shelley.
This double cast is initially striking, drawing a clear symbolic analogy of Victor’s neglect for his monster to Percy’s neglect of Mary. However, as the fictional Victor invades more and more of Mary’s waking life, his role in the story becomes muddled. At times, he acts as a tormentor, forcing Mary to confront her monstrous nature. However, he also serves as a surrogate to Percy, who becomes an outlet for her sexual frustration in the wake of Percy’s coldness after the birth of their second child.
It is Victor, not Percy, who supports Mary during childbirth, offering to be the better Percy and not to abandon her as Percy has, and while simultaneously acting as an object of Mary’s wrath. He is an avatar of Percy, to be punished for his mistreatment of Mary Shelley. Victor’s role shifts throughout the movie, in a way that is neither clear nor seemingly very deliberate. In fact, the treatment of the “roles” each character fills in the story of Frankenstein proves to be a challenge too ambitious for Unkel, as it is the depiction of these roles that drags the film down the furthest. In particular, it is Unkel’s bizarre depiction of Mary Shelley herself that complicates the film’s intended message.
In Unkel’s vision of Mary Shelley’s creation, the simplified and widely popularized narrative of the novel’s writing is eschewed for something darker. The film is punctuated by sexual and matrilineal violence. The major emotional beats all center on this theme: first, Shelley has a miscarriage on the steps of Lord Byron’s home while writing her story; then, she is traumatically raped by Percy and becomes pregnant again, only for the child to ultimately die; finally, the third act is propelled forward by a traumatized Mary raping Percy, and becoming pregnant a third time. Instead of being dreamt up as a cautionary tale of intellectual hubris one stormy night in Lord Byron’s home, Frankenstein is a product of the pain and suffering of motherhood, and the trauma of rape.
A Nightmare Wakes’ Shelley is bound to her identity as a mother before all else, and the novel exists as an outlet of the pain, suffering, and trauma of motherhood and miscarriage. The novel’s conception is brought on by the miscarriage of Shelley’s first pregnancy, with the monster of the novel acting as an encapsulation of her suffering, and the novel itself acting as a surrogate child. As the work ramps up to completion, the draft is interrupted by Percy, who returns drunk from a party at Lord Byron’s and rapes a grieving Shelley in their bed, getting her pregnant once more. The work is interrupted, as she must write in secret while placed on bed rest. Similarly, the completion of the work is spurred by the death of the child that results from Percy’s rape; something that is left ambiguous for the audience to determine how involved Shelley was in the death.
This, perhaps, is the greatest issue with the liberties A Nightmare Wakes takes with Shelley’s legacy: how far can a human monster go? It seems the viewer is meant to sympathize strongly with Shelley, despite her rough edges. After all, the story as presented is one of unhappiness: of course, she must deal with the trauma of her miscarriage and the negligence of Percy Shelley, shown through her acting as the monster of her novel. But the monster of her novel is a creature abandoned, “a Creature who craves only love–but knows only pain and anger,” to quote Shelley herself. Mary is analogized to the creature, but she is a human being raised in the company of other people, who has been, at least to some degree, loved, and is not reviled and attacked by any person who perceives her.
How, then, are we as an audience expected to respond to her rape of Percy Shelley? Yes, Percy rapes her horrifically earlier in the film, an emblem of the violence the monster is victim too, but she simply cannot receive the same sympathy some may give the monster. Mary’s rape of Percy is emblematic of the larger issues with A Nightmare Wakes’ depiction of the famous author: despite all of the sympathy it wants to drum up for her, it makes her a monster less akin to the morally ambiguous and deeply tragic creature of Shelley’s novel, and more the embodiment of wrath and evil that has plagued adaptations of the novel since the original 1931 film. A feminist take of Mary Shelley, one that asks the audience to consider her as a modern woman, cannot eschew the evil of rape so long as it is not carried out by a man, but instead upon one.
Beyond the frankly disturbing characterization of Mary Shelley, the film also falls victim to overused horror genre tropes, with an abundance of shaky camerawork and overbearing string orchestrations being especially present issues. However, A Nightmare Wakes is, at its core, a fascinating attempt at formatting biographical narrative, and valiantly commits to telling Mary Shelley’s story as an adaptation of her own work. It is a narrative technique with promise that unfortunately falls flat due to the liberties taken with Shelley’s legacy in order to stitch together the pieces of her work and her life. The film sutures together and reanimates Shelley’s life and legacy into a morbid adaptation of a work that ultimately forms her into more monster than woman.
Perhaps the film and its flaws can be best summarized by the quote Shelley reads before the credits roll, a quote taken too literally by the film to achieve the kind of sympathy her own creature receives to this day: “Beware, for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. For, if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.”
