Mary Shelley is played by Elle Fanning, who was last seen in The Beguiled (2017), and the film chronicles her love affair with the charismatic married poet, Percy Shelley (Douglas Booth), and her determination, her ideas about feminism and her free way of thinking. Mary and Percy elope to escape the wrath of the Wollstonecraft family’s disapproval, accompanied by Mary’s half-sister (Bel Powley). Eventually, while staying at the home of Lord Byron (Tom Sturridge) at Lake Geneva, Mary conceives the novel Frankenstein after being set the challenge to write a ghost story, and what soon comes to pass is an unsettling love story that descends into a toxic void of emotions and creates the backbone of one of pop culture’s most fascinating monsters.

Elle Fanning, as always, carries her badge of innocent serenity with masterful grace, similar to her equanimeous poise in The Neon Demon, a more demanding role than the material offered here. The film’s almost perfect casting captures the pathos of the Frankenstein story thanks to solid performances, but the film’s whimsical script derails its proceedings into soap opera territory more often than not – a habit both writer and director should try to avoid in future projects.

The film’s rich aesthetics help detract from the mediocre baggage carried from post to post as the first-time writer and director tick off the generic emotional tussles so often focused on in such dramatisations. Lord Byron, played by Tom Sturridge, is the film’s ultimate trump card. Sturridge manages to  layer up his  performance  as the  overtly  obnoxious