New to Netflix from today is the fantasy-adventure movie, Damsel. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, the movie stars Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Nick Robinson, Angela Bassett, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Robin Wright, and tells the story of a young princess who is sacrificed to a dragon.
In the film, Elodie is a young princess living in an impoverished kingdom. She spends her days gathering firewood to help her father’s subjects get through another harsh winter, but the future does not look bright.
One day, a travelling party from the prosperous Kingdom of Aurea arrives and presents the King with a proposal. This proposal includes an offer of marriage for Elodie, which in turn will bring great wealth.
After travelling to Aurea to meet her future husband, Prince Henry, Elodie agrees to get married. It’s a beautiful occasion, Elodie is very happy, and suddenly everything appears much more positive.
But as Elodie soon discovers, there is much more to this marriage than she was aware. After taking part in a blood ritual, Elodie is tossed into a cave and is given as a sacrifice to an ancient dragon.
If you’re a fan of sword and sorcery-style fantasy films, the sort which did the rounds during the 1980s, then chances are you’ll find Damsel somewhat appealing. With its duplicitous kingdom, it’s fire-breathing dragon, and the inclusion of Robin Wright (The Princess Bride) amongst its cast, Damselcertainly has many of the ingredients for a bit of sword-swinging, corset-wearing fun.
Thanks to some decent production values, as well as some beautiful cinematography from Larry Fong (Watchmen), the movie looks impressive too. And if this wasn’t enough, the score from David Fleming, which is produced by none other than Hans Zimmer, adds to the positives.
So, yes, Damsel has a lot going for it, and for some it should prove fairly agreeable. It’s certainly an easy way to spend 100+ minutes of your time, and as a bit of Friday or Saturday night fluff it’s not bad.
The problem is, while Damsel does tick many of the right boxes and gets off to a promising start, it struggles after a while and this is due to two key issues. Firstly it’s not very original, and secondly there’s little in the way of story.
The originality is a stumbling block but to a certain degree it can be overlooked, however, the lack of story is far more restrictive. In short: There’s not much going on in the film, and once it pushes beyond the first act it becomes clear this impacts the remainder of the movie.
After Elodie is tossed into the cave with the dragon, the picture loses momentum. The entire midsection of Damsel is essentially scenes of Elodie running around stalagmites and stalactites, there’s not much more to it, and for a good 20-30 minutes it all feels very padded.
Things do pick up a bit towards the end, when Elodie starts fighting back against the dragon, as well as the kingdom that wronged her, but again, there’s not much more to it than this.
On the plus side, Milly Bobby Brown is great in the role of Elodie, even if certain aspects of the part feel a tad thankless. She has a good command of the screen, plays Elodie as brave and courageous, and does everything she is asked to do.
Brown doesn’t get to show off her talents in the same way she does in the recent Enola Holmes movies, but this is mostly because the material she is given here is a bit thin on the ground. There’s not a great deal of dialogue to work with, and running around a dimly lit cave can only offer so much.
Either way, she does what she needs to and the same can be said for the rest of the cast, who make the most of their limited parts. Winstone, Bassett, and Robinson are wasted, but presumably they got paid well, so I doubt they care.
Robin Wright is arguably the stand-out actor in the film (outside of Brown) as her role as the evil Queen of Aurea allows her to be suitably menacing. However, yep, you guessed it, she’s also not given much to do either, which is another shame.
Ultimately, Damsel is fine in places but a bit of a mixed bag overall. It starts off well, but after the first 30 minutes it begins to flounder and despite picking up a little towards the end it all kind of runs out of steam.
It certainly has the potential to be something good, and so long as you lower expectations it’s got entertaining moments, but the lack of story is a significant problem. All the elements are there, and you can feel the film trying to strike gold, but it all falls a bit short.
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