MARY SHELLEY

Cast: Elle Fanning, Maisie Williams Director: Haifaa alMansour Running time: 120 mins Rating: PG (Coarse language and sex scenes)

Verdict: More interesting than the standard biopic, but doesn’t take enough risks.

MARY SHELLEY, one of the key figures in the genesis of the modern horror landscape, gets the biopic treatment here, courtesy of remarkable Saudi Arabian film-maker Haifaa alMansour (Wadjda).

The move from modern-day Saudi Arabia to period-piece England is a fair jump, but alMansour handles the transition with ease, creating a work that occasionally clings too closely to standard biopic fare, but nevertheless creates a compelling examination of the fundamental importance and significance of female creativity.

The film captures a relatively short but enormously tumultuous stretch of time in the life of the iconic author — played with poise and control by Elle Fanning — from her courtship with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to the inception and creation of her genre-smashing masterpiece,

Frankenstein, a foundational stone in understanding how we perceive modern horror.

Unfortunately, it regularly falls into the trap of Wikipedia-style box-ticking. The frequently

melodramatic, whirlwind relationship between Mary and Percy (Douglas Booth, who comes off less noble poet, more colossal pain) is often too on-the-nose in the way it draws parallels to Mary’s monster.

Mary Shelley works best when al-Mansour lets loose, as when she and her companions shack up at the dastardly Lord Byron’s estate (he is played with delightful relish by Tom Sturridge) for an extended period of time to get drunk, take drugs and argue with each other.

When it stops the narrative in its tracks and attempts to dig into what made her so brilliant, Mary

Shelley occasionally snatches at moments of brilliance itself.