When it comes to fantasy movies, I am always intrigued. As I have said countless times on our The Film Box podcast, The Lord of the Rings franchise is my favorite of all time so I am always looking forward to new fantasy or medieval content being released. I haven’t seen a quality piece of medieval fantasy since Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and the second season of The Witcher came out, and well, I guess I will have to wait a little bit longer.Â
Damsel is a netflix original fantasy movie that stars the Netflix queen herself, Millie Bobby Brown. In this film, she plays Elodie, a princess who is sworn to marry a prince to try and unite the two families. All is normal as it seems but then there’s a twist with the family. Elodie quickly realizes as she gets tossed down a pit into a dragon’s lair that turns out to be a sacrifice in order to protect the family from the dragon’s wrath. Elodie must evade the dragon while trying to find her way back to the sunlight and confront the evil royals.
Bobby Brown is joined by a couple famous faces but also by a few new ones. Angela Bassett and Robin White both portray the opposing queens and Shohreh Aghdashloo and Ray Winstone play the dragon’s voice and Elodie’s father (the king) respectively. The biggest positive to the film for me was the acting. I think they all did a great job for the type of script they were given. Millie Bobby Brown deserves so much more than the mediocre content that Netflix is putting out. I personally enjoy the Enola Holmes films that she stars in, however I think I am in the minority. She is such a talented actress and puts everything into her performances that it almost seems like she is wasting her talent on smaller roles like these.Â
Another positive to Damsel was the scenery shots and camera work. There were numerous scenes where it showed the landscape, obviously most of it was CGI but it actually looked pretty decent and caught me staring at it.Â
There were definitely some things wrong though. First, the dialogue and script was all over the place. It was bland and didn’t have any depth to it. There were a couple scenes with Elodie and her sister that was alright but for the most part, it was just cringy or meaningless. I didn’t feel any connections with any character beside Elodie, because Millie Bobby Brown did superb.Â
The entire sequence with Elodie in the dragon’s lair was a bit tough to watch. Half the time she was just yelling, groaning because she got hurt so much or just walking through darkness. I figured the entire movie was going to be just her escaping the dragon but then she escapes, and then goes back down there to save her sister. I feel like it was just a repeat of what I just watched.
Final Thoughts:
I think I liked Damsel more than most. Yes it has some flaws but overall was an okay fantasy film. I am eager to see if they will expand more with this universe or if it is just a one and done. I am also hoping Millie Bobby Brown will be moving onto bigger and better projects, especially after the movie. I may be a bit biased but I would recommend seeing this movie if you are a fantasy nerd like me.
