In 1816, on a dark and stormy night, Lord Byron proposed a competition amongst his house guests to tell the most terrifying horror story. Mary Shelley would later flesh out her story from the evening into Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
Haifaa al-Mansour’s biopic chronicles the poor treatment at the hands of the men in her life, chance encounters, and diverse interests of Mary Shelley (Elle Fanning) that led to the creation of her most famous work – one of the earliest examples of science fiction. With the subject matter considered unsuitable to be connected with a female author, the book struggled to be published, and only found publication anonymously, with the presumption of its origins with Mary’s husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth.)
With so many retellings and variations on Shelley’s original novel having made their way to the screen, it is only fitting that the story of its author is also told cinematically.
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