Damsel

The tone is a little inconsistent at times, and it’s probably too intense in places for younger viewers, but there are some great ideas in Damsel that play with the fantasy genre tropes, and Millie Bobby Brown gives another great lead performance.

Premise:  Elodie (Millie Bobby Brown), the daughter of Lord Bayford (Ray Winston), is told that to save her people from starvation she is to marry the eldest son of Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright).  Travelling to the opulent capital from her snowy home with her father, younger sister, and step-mother (Angela Bassett), Elodie soon discovers that the kingdom is plagued by a fire-breathing dragon, and that the uneasy truce with the creature requires a sacrifice...

Review:

Damsel is a film that’s a little tricky to pigeonhole.  It’s directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who’s perhaps best known for directing the gnarly horror film 28 Weeks Later, and so some of the scenes in Damsel are likely to be too intense for younger viewers.  But equally, it is a story about a teenage “princess” confronting a dragon in a magical kingdom, and so it’s tone in places is far closer to a traditional fairytale than more “grounded” fantasy films like The Lord of the Rings, or even Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves.  This may put off some adult viewers – which would be a shame, as this film has some great ideas and deserves to find a wider audience than just the “young adult” demographic.

Just as with the Enola Holmes films, Damsel’s main strength is Millie Bobby Brown‘s central performance.  Here, her character starts off as much more of an “everyman” character, rather than the eccentric genius of Enola Holmes or the superpowered being of Stranger Things.  Yes, Elodie is the daughter of a Lord (played by Ray Winstone), but theirs is a very impoverished and remote northern realm, where everyone (including them) are struggling to survive – Elodie is introduced to the audience while she is chopping wood in a barren snowy landscape, to reinforce that she is very far removed from the grandeur and opulence of the far-away capital.

“…Elodie is by no means a pampered princess…”

Elodie’s willingness to accept a marriage proposal from a prince she has never met is motivated not by personal ambition, but by a desire to do right by her struggling people.  While her younger sister gets to revel in the luxury and splendour of life in the royal court, Elodie is far more pragmatic, seeing the union as a price worth paying for the future of her people.

All of this is (minor spoiler alert – although this is effectively the main premise of the movie!) building towards the moment when Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright) and the royal court sacrifice Elodie to the dragon that lives in the mountain overlooking the capital.  Although Elodie is by no means a pampered princess, she has led a relatively sheltered life that leaves her totally unprepared for what she has to face in this film.  With literally nothing more than the clothes on her back and her wits, she has to face a beast who (as we have seen in the movie’s prologue) made short work of a whole team of armoured knights.

“…the filmmakers’ keep the focus solely on Elodie…”

While I don’t mind spoiling the fact that Elodie is sacrificed to the dragon (as I say, I don’t even really consider it a spoiler as that is the central premise of the film), I don’t really want to give away anything that happens from that point onward, because the film had several genuinely surprising twists and turns for me.  What I will say is that I really enjoyed the filmmakers’ decision to keep the focus solely on Elodie – once she enters the dragon’s lair, the film sticks with her point of view and her fight for survival, rather than cutting away to show what any of the other characters are doing at the same time.

In terms of those other characters, while this film has a great supporting cast (Robin Wright, Ray Winston and Angela Bassett), none of them get a great amount to do.  This is certainly in part because the film is told almost entirely from Elodie’s perspective (even before she enters the dragon’s lair), so the other characters only appear when they interact with her – but at least actors of this calibre are able to make every moment of screentime count.  That said, I do want to take a moment to mention Shohreh Aghdashloo, who does great work as the voice of the dragon and who really brings that character to life.

“…the script inventively subverts the genre cliches…”

But much like in the Enola Holmes movies, Millie Bobby Brown carries Damsel entirely on her shoulders, although she’s more than up to the task.  Holding her own in the early scenes where Elodie struggles to adjust to life in the royal palace, she really excels once Elodie finds herself alone in the dragon’s lair, fighting for survival.  Given that there are chunks of the film where Millie Bobby Brown is literally alone on screen with no one else to interact with, the fact that this film is so entertaining and enjoyable is almost entirely down to her performance.

Overall, the tone veers between tense (12-rated) survival horror (at some points reminding me of the 2018 Tomb Raider reboot) to more traditional fairytale moments that feel a lot more family-friendly – but throughout it all, Millie Boddy Brown carries the audience with her, the script inventively subverts the genre cliches, and the plot goes in some unexpected directions.  Not quite a masterpiece, but definitely worth a couple of hours of your time.