A Nightmare Wakes

I sat down to watch the 2020 movie "A Nightmare Wakes" as it was supposedly a movie based on Mary Shelley and the creation of the iconic "Frankenstein" story. Little did I know that I was in for a snoozefest of grand proportions from writer and director Nora Unkel.

The storyline told in "A Nightmare Wakes" was just horribly slow paced and rather uninteresting, to be bluntly honest. And it was a massive struggle for me to sit through this ordeal of a movie. But I endured, hoping the movie would eventually pick up its pacing and become interesting. But alas, it just never did, much to my disappointment.

This 2020 movie is listed as a drama and thriller. Yeah, you might have to look hard and long for the thriller aspect to the movie. It was a prolonged drama heavy on storytelling that proved essentially pointless.

I found "A Nightmare Wakes" to be a disappointing movie experience, and it was a movie that I had actually looked forward to sitting down to watch. And trust me when I say that I will never pick up this movie and view it again. The storyline was a struggle to get through the first time around, so why inflict additional self-torment by attempting a second viewing.

How true "A Nightmare Wakes" is to the actual life of Mary Shelley, I can only guess about, as I have no clue.

The acting performances in the movie were adequate, but it just was a shame that the actors and actresses had so very little of any proper contents to work with in terms of script, plot and storyline.

Don't waste your time, money or effort on this 2020 movie from writer and director Nora Unkel, because it is simply not really worth it. My rating of "A Nightmare Wakes" lands on a mere three out of ten stars. The movie does have some interesting enough details to it in terms of props, costumes and settings.

I don't know what the director achieved by giving us this garbage. Saw it on Shudder and it was a cold winter afternoon, I almost feel asleep through this which is very difficult if you're watching a supposed horror movie. The main guys are particularly bad actor and really average lookers not worthy of becoming actors , the female lead is atleast better looking to help you pass this nonsense. Overall nothing interesting or worth, expected better from Shudder sorry

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.

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.

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.