"This is a film that emphasises not the horror of the Frankenstein story, but its pathos and pity: the creature that is deeply lonely and unhappy, burdened with a life it didn't want." (The Guardian)

"'Mary Shelley' is a luscious-looking spectacle, drenched in the colors and visceral sensations of nature, the sensuality of young lovers, the passionate disappointment of loss and betrayal. But above all it is a film about ideas that breaks out of the well-worn mold of period drama (partly, anyway) by reaching deeply into the mind of the extraordinary woman who wrote the Gothic evergreen 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus' when she was 18. Making Mary into a woman in control of her life and choices rather than a victim of cruel and insensitive men, director Haifaa Al-Mansour shows how the struggles of her youth swiftly matured her understanding of women's place in the world." (The Hollywood Reporter)