“A Nightmare Wakes” (2020)

Releases February 4th 2021

Written and Directed by Nora Unkel

Not Rated, recommended mature audiences

Genre: Historical Drama/Horror

Trigger Warnings: miscarriage, pregnancy loss, extreme blood, PTSD, sexual assault, rape, coerced consent, relationship trauma, on screen suicide, violence towards women

I feel like when it comes to matters of birth, pregnancy loss/miscarriage, rape/assault, and similar trauma, hardly anyone handles it better than women or queer individuals. These individuals have a shared experience of trauma that intermingles and overlaps. I appreciate when those subjects are handled poetically, artistically, and creatively in a sensitive manner. The subjects are less frequently portrayed in an overtly pleasurable sexual manner, and instead played straightforward or more dramatically as if meant for the stage. But sometimes, people can truly get carried away with the romantic, the gothic, or the poetic, and do the difficult topics of trauma an immense disservice by making them convoluted and thus defeating the purpose. How is an audience supposed to build empathy if they can't even discern what is happening in fantasy versus reality?

A Nightmare Wakes has quite a lot of things going for it. Firstly, it has a beautiful aesthetic. It’s made of all the gorgeously dark and romantic things one associates with gothic literature. We are gifted with wide, overwhelming views of landscapes and deep, dark, all-consuming bodies of water. The light is filtered as if it is a perpetual cloudy day, even on days where it seems the weather is pleasant. Our characters are clothed in romantic dresses in pastel hues or stark flowing white nightgowns, our men are dressed in peasant tops or vests and jackets with brocade. The costuming here is fantastic, and any intense emotional scenes are punctuated with deep colours with the saturation turned slightly down. The visuals dance across the screen looking almost as if a painting left out in the sun a bit too long has come to life. The ability to paint such gorgeously heartbreaking portrayals of death, miscarriage, depression, patriarchal oppression, and then some is the director’s strongest quality here.

Unfortunately, this incredible ability to create a seamless transition between Shelley’s waking life and her nightmarish hellscapes of hallucination and grief also serves as the film's greatest weakness. The real world and nightmares become indiscernible after a while, and I found myself getting more and more lost as the film progressed. In the beginning, I found it a bit disjointed, moving along in the timeline so quickly with no indication of such long chunks of time passing. It darted here and there with the nightmares serving as transition.  I suppose the intended effect was to draw you into her suffering and grief more intensely, and illustrate how much of her days were spent in grief and sadness, but I found myself quite confused as I tried to navigate what the symbolism was and where. I felt the portions of the story which were to be her writing Frankenstein itself were a little lost in the wind as well. The director chose to use the same cast to portray Shelley’s characters, and while poetic, it was a bit disjointed and jarring for me. Given that the film is advertised to be about her life and the novel, that bit seemed to get muddled and lost in the shuffle.

Although I previously thought I’d been well informed about Shelley’s life, it turns out there was quite a bit I had yet to learn, and I appreciate the material which the movie brought to light.  Perhaps one who was first better schooled in the fine minutiae of Shelley’s life may fare a bit better in deciphering the coded visuals. I do appreciate the movie inspiring me to delve further into her biography to even better understand what I had seen, but I did find myself pausing momentarily to try and make sense of what was being interpreted on screen. That confusion took me out of the story a little, and contributed further to the disjointed tone. Once I spent some time decoding the bits I was missing, I did also note that they glossed over some other subjects such as her “free love” lifestyle among other things, which seemed to be sprinkled into her Frankenstein narrative along the way. I do find myself curious about the dynamic of their relationship, which the movie paints as fraught with tempestuous emotions. Previous to this film I had only read of their “great romance” and whirlwind love story (albeit a little creepy due to the age difference, but these were different times, I am aware).

That all being said, I do wish to commend the director for so deftly handling the traumas of marriage/domestic life, pregnancy, childbirth, miscarriage, motherhood, and postpartum depression. It was refreshing to find these sensitive subjects told without the perspective of the cis-hetero male gaze. The imagery and thematic elements pertaining to these subjects revealed themselves in tears melding to ink blots, puddles of black India ink pooling in place of blood, and imagery of the ideal feminist man interspersed. It is clear that Shelley’s feminist themes were interwoven into this creative interpretation. The women in this film stood more front and center while the men seemed to serve only as foils to their emotional experience and development. I enjoyed seeing the sensitive yet quiet strength of Shelley framed by men in the background, and how she harnessed that vulnerability in her writing and creativity. I could have done with more character development overall, though, as most of the portrayals felt as caricatures instead of fully-fledged personalities.

Overall I feel that this is a very interesting watch on an aesthetic level, but is perhaps missing some of the depth and clarity that could have made it a peak viewing experience.  A Nightmare Wakes is certainly the literary gothic Pinterest board or Tumblr blog of your internet dreams. If you’re looking for something that’s highly accurate, there are better offerings, as this takes some great liberties in shifting around some timeline points. If you’re gathering inspiration for your next melodramatic art piece or getting in the mood to write a gothic story, this might be neat to look at.

Review by Ellen Avigliano

Twitter: @imaginariumcs
Website: www.imaginariumarts.com
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Thank you to Shudder and the filmmaker for allowing me an advance screener copy of this movie for consideration.