A Nightmare Wakes

Very dull and the actors DO NOT match the characters they are playing. Who did their auditions? Another one of those that could have been really good but here we go again with total rubbish!!!!! If you want to see a good movie about Mary Shelley check out "Gothic"!! It is an older movie 1986 but you will love it.

Honestly I would give this a solid seven but I bumped A Nightmare Wakes up to eight because all of the low scores are ludicrous and ignorant. I had trepidation that this would be poorly acted or badly directed but in fact it is a beautiful, haunting film that speculates on the private lives of Mary Godwin and Percy Byshe Shelley.

Neither of these creative people were at all stable, and had it not been for the fame of Mary's father and the wealth of Percy's aristocratic family, they doubtlessly would have been lost to history as a couple of drug addicts. A Nightmare Wakes makes no apologies for beating down on this reality in a way that likely upset the twee literature majors who were offended seeing Mary as she often was - a depressed woman who died of a brain tumor, who drank alcohol and took opiates, and lost not one or two but three of her children in infancy.

This film suggests that Mary may have even killed one of her children accidentally in a fit of post-partum psychosis, since Percy was frequently absent, out partying and philandering with other women (and men).

Too many scenes destroyed by dark filming where you can't see characters and even though it's based on real people there is nothing redeeming about these two. It's not suspenseful in the least more depressing than anything. Granted Mary Shelley lived a very depressed life. I thought that this film would be more about her visions of the actual Frankenstein characters from her book. Instead it was a constant argument between Percy and Mary.

The acting was very good though. Too bad there wasn't a better script. Has a lot of potential.

One to dodge people.

Showed promise with the initial premise - poorly executed.

The scenery is bland, repetitive and brings you down.

The actors are mostly poor but at least the lead lady is trying to do something.

It's a B level horror/drama that is lower than you would expect from any TV series/film production.

We all love the horror story, Frankenstein, but this is one horror of a story that you'll soon wish to forget. Nothing happens!

Avoid, unless you are struggling to sleep.

There was genuinely nothing about this that necessitated it being about historical figures. They took a few elements of Shelley's life, pasted names on some actors, and trotted them lifelessly around bland sets with a desaturated filter and some whispery dialogue, and you could have told the same story about a woman writing a book in any era for the exact same lackluster effect. Don't waste your time, especially if you're actually looking for horror.