A Nightmare Wakes (2020) User Reviews

Some sort of bio-pic. I think.

[richardwworkman · 4/10 · 6 February 2021]

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.

Ugh annoying, boring medieval nonsense

[arrmeen · 3/10 · 16 February 2021]

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

Cultural Appropriation

[celt007 · 4/10 · 4 February 2021]

The actors don't fit the fact of the history . I find it distracting and unbelievable.when I watch a historical drama based on a true event I like to see actors representative of the culture , Ethnic group etc...

Like if they did a remake of Shaka Zulu I would expect someone that is not white to play Shaka Zulu .

But the actors are good none the less but woke film making is distracting and annoying .

Lost 3 stars because of it .

Waste of time

[sautdebasque · 1/10 · 4 March 2021]

WTF. Depressing and dull. It's definitely not horror.

Darkness doesn't need our help

[nogodnomasters · 2/10 · 13 August 2021]

This is another retelling of the tale on Mary Shelly writing her novel Frankenstein. It engages her real life but not any sort of interesting or horrific way that made the film worth viewing. "Mary Shelly" or "Gothic" were more entertaining. Might find a niche audience.

Don't Bother

[tinahale-25109 · 1/10 · 19 July 2021]

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.

Wake Me Up When It's Over

[ZombieHank · 1/10 · 9 February 2021]

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.

Painfully generic

[scheherezhad · 2/10 · 7 February 2021]

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.

Not interesting

[octoberbaby-64500 · 3/10 · 7 February 2021]

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.

Birth and creation, horror and death...

[alyoshadave · 8/10 · 3 April 2021]

Dissolved into transcendence.

If nothing else, this film found a perspective on Frankenstein somewhat less fantastical, less other-worldly than that in which it is normally viewed...not the hubris of a man into a god, but rather the stillbirth of the yearning for connection between all that is mundane and common, no matter the costume or setting.

If all you can see here is skin color and ethnicity, then you have birthed your own horror, failed in your own journey towards humanity.

As such, whatever its failings, this film works on many levels...

A Valiant Effort, but Confused and Confusing

[silvio-mitsubishi · 5/10 · 28 April 2023]

An ambitious blend of fact and fiction, fantasy and reality, telling the story of Mary Godwin's marriage to Percy Shelley and creating an allegory in which the story of Frankenstein serves as a metaphor for their disturbed relationship.

Timelines are blurred as Godwin miscarries Shelley's baby, immediately followed by the suicide by drowning of Shelley's first wife, then the birth and early death of Mary's child William and Shelley's affair with Mary's step-sister Claire, leading to the poet's own death.

The central idea of the Frankenstein tale growing from Mary's psychosis is a good one, and the screenplay does well to integrate so many factual elements into a reasonable storyline, but this is also partly the film's undoing. A simpler telling would have worked better, without the shifting allegiances between Shelley, Mary, Claire and Lord Byron distracting from the plot.

Bravely, the script does not try to sugarcoat any of the characters. The literary couple are volatile, jealous, self-centred and spoilt. The romance is no fairytale, and the child death is harrowing. Laudanum contributes to the paranoia and mistrust between the characters, but ultimately the audience is left with no clear sense of what has happened. Too many liberties and inventions simply cause confusion and the film fails to convince.

The boredom wakes...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 1 April 2021]

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.