Creator or Creature? A Nightmare Wakes dramatizes the birth of Frankenstein

Alix Wilton Regan stars as Mary Shelley in the throes of creating her timeless literary masterpiece, in A Nightmare Wakes.

It's one of the most famous origin stories in literary history. One summer night in 1816 in Geneva, Lord Byron hosted a gathering of his fellow Romantics, including Percy Shelley and his lover (soon-to-be wife), Mary Godwin. The incessant rain confined the party indoors for days at a time, and one night, over dinner at the Villa Diodati, Byron proposed that everyone write a ghost story to amuse themselves. The result was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the classic Gothic horror tale of a mad scientist who creates a monster-arguably the first science fiction novel.

That fateful summer is the subject of A Nightmare Wakes, the first feature film from writer/director Nora Unkel. It has been portrayed before, most recently in a 2020 episode of Doctor Who, but Unkel's film delves particularly into Mary Shelley's inner state of mind and the process of creation, as the world of her imagination begins to bleed into her reality. Per the official premise: "While composing her famous novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (Alix Wilton Regan) descends into an opium-fueled fever dream while carrying on a torrid love affair with Percy Shelley (Giullian Yao Gioiello). As she writes, the characters of her novel come to life and begin to plague her relationship with Percy. Before long, she must choose between true love and her literary masterpiece."

(Mild spoilers below)

Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments