It's actually pretty good
“Damsel” is a fairytale that eventually transitions into a monster movie. The surprise is it’s better than it has any expectation of being. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, whose best credit leading to this was “28 Weeks Later”, this is a captivating little thrill ride, done in B-grade style, but also made with a sure hand for mood and pacing and containing some terrific moments of action.
It also gets a more than able performance from “Stranger Things” Millie Bobby Brown, playing a noblewoman named Elodie whose family and village is in dire straits from famine. Luckily the Prince of Aurea (Nick Robinson) has taken a shine to her and is willing to make her his Princess. His Kingdom suffers for nothing. One of the marvels created by the movie’s production and VFX crew is the pure extravagance and lushness of the castle and surrounding area.
Everything looks very beneficial, yet the Prince’s family seem rather keen to keep this awfully transactional. They are an extremely ominous bunch; being around them seems more like entering into a cult rather than a family. They’re led by Robin Wright’s Queen, who’s prickly and impersonal with the girl and even more so with her parents (Angela Bassett, Ray Winstone).
The real reason of what the family wants with Elodie arrives when she awakens in a chasm; a dark and desolate looking place that somewhat mirrors The Upside Down in
“Stranger Things”. It’s a place of mystery as well as frights- filled with wooden spikes, birds which burst out of dark spaces after just being set aflame, and what look like glowing, blue leeches.
But the biggest thing to be concerned with is a pissed off giant mother dragon, a magnificent looking creature which has been killing women, or more to the point daughters, for ages due to a past injustice suffered by her.
Fresnadillo does his best, moodiest work during these cave sequences, as the mystery of the place eventually becomes a battleground where Elodie is diving to avoid flames and crawling and climbing barefoot and bloody like a female, fantasyland John McClane through the caves’ crevices and other jagged areas in an attempt to survive and also find her way out. There’s an eerie quality to the whole thing- Elodie is even confronted by the ghosts of women’s past and the dragon herself is given a wonderful bit of menace from raspy voiced actress Shohrah Agadashloo.
It’s a one-dimensional plot but Brown does a better than expected job creating sympathy for the character who could have just gone through the motions. Those motions are of course getting betrayed, cowering in fear, and eventually finding the resourcefulness to survive. But Brown commits to every moment of hurt, struggle, and cunning ferocity; she survives more by a strength of wit than because she suddenly becomes Wonder Woman.
The fact it’s on Netflix may be a contributing factor to why I feel this is so good. If it was in a theater, this would maybe feel a bit barebones for the ticket price. But also can’t deny that the Dragon stuff would look awesome on a big screen, as it does on the small.
What’s exceptional about the film is in the action set pieces, but even better is that for all the “Madame Webs” out there, it’s refreshing that “Damsel” at the very least proves that strong female leads are not a thing of the past. It also proves you don’t even really need to try that hard to create one. It’s a lead character easy enough to root for in a film that is far better at suspense than plot, but boy, is it mindlessly rousing fun!