We are only two months into 2021 and its safe to say I have my first favorite movie of the year. On February 4th (days after the 170th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s death) Shudder welcomed Nora Unkel’s A Nightmare Wakes, a brooding and complex story of obsession fueled by grief, rage and opiate-laced fever dreams.
An unsettlingly intimate portrayal of a brilliant artist at her most troubled, while composing her famous novel Frankenstein- also known as The Modern Prometheus- Mary Shelley descends into madness and fever dreams, while balancing a torrid love affair with poet Percy Shelly, and a difficult pregnancy that ends in tragedy. As she writes, the characters of her novel come to life and begin to plague the relationships with those closest to her as the shadow of her monster threatens to overcome her.
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In Unkel’s director’s statement she explained that she wanted “…to leave audiences enraptured by Mary’s chilling, intimate, and dark narrative—a narrative to enter their darkest nightmare,” and right from the get go it’s a feat as Nightmare instantly establishes its uncanny ability at capturing the complexity of human emotion. A Nightmare Wakes embraces the classic horror style and wastes no time intimidating its audience with a wildly odd and unsettling atmosphere. You’re on the edge of your seat the whole time.
That being said its not with out a handful of issues; the various subplots that either get thrown away haphazardly or forgotten about entirely (the affair between Lord Byron and Claire, the outcome of the bet that inspired Frankenstein’s creation) and the occasional scene that is so melodramatic that it verges on comedic. But in terms of good outweighing the bad- these flaws are easily overlooked. All in all, A Nightmare Wakes is a moody, brooding and dark little watch, a triumph of a historical thriller that is so full of flavor it very well may change how you look at the story of Frankenstein entirely.
WICKED RATING: 7/10
Director(s): Nora Unkel
Writer(s): Nora Unkel
Stars: Alix Wilton Regan, Philippe Bowgen, Giullian Yao Gioiello, Claire Glassford, Lee Garrett, Shannon Spangler and Nicholas Freeland Clark
VOD Release date: February 4th, 2021 (Shudder)
Studio/Production Company: Logical Pictures and Wild Obscura
Language: English
Run Time: 90 minutes
