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Millie Bobby Brown furthers her status as Netflix’s premier headliner with Damsel, a girl-vs.-dragon fantasy-survival not-quite-an-epic from director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later). You surely know that the charming and charismatic young actor enjoyed a major fame boost via Stranger Things, and subsequently the Enola Holmes franchise, a big Netflix hit that should yield a third outing here eventually. Those two properties made great use of the It and Stuff that Brown has – you know, the It and Stuff that make movie stars highly watchable. With Damsel, she continues on the don’t-underestimate-young-women track that the Holmeses established, with one key difference: With a relatively sparse supporting cast, Damsel finds her carrying all the dramatic weight. Does she do so capably and successfully? Let’s dive in and find out.
DAMSEL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Once upon a time in an obviously CGI land with CGI mountains and CGI castles – sigh – there lived a princess who could chop the living eff outta some wood. As you damn well should know by now, showing a young woman single-stroking a log in two with a mighty THWACK is how movies illustrate that a female character isn’t just about baking, wearing makeup, swooning over swoopy-haired gents and child-rearing. This princess’ name is Elodie (Brown). She’s tight with her younger sister Floria (Brooke Carter). Her Father The King (Ray Winstone) is a widower who remarried Lady Bayford (Angela Bassett); Elodie calls Lady Bayford “Stepmother,” as in, “Oh, Stepmother, how are you today?” and the like. It’s rather awkward, but this is how the movie lets us know that she’s the stepmother around here. Now, is she wicked? No. She’s just fine, maybe a bit much, but we’ve seen far worse stepmothers in movies before, far, far worse.
Where was I? Right: The land in which Elodie and co. live is deep in the north where food is scarce and warmth is hard to come by – she was chopping wood to give to struggling folk. She’s a sweet young woman, this Elodie, and she doesn’t at all deserve what’s about to happen, which seems like an OK thing to happen at first, but ends up being not at all OK in the slightest. I mean, I told you already that she has to fight a dragon, right, and the implication is, that’s not ideal. But before that happens, she has to endure the fairy-tale/fantasy-saga princess rite of passage, and be married off to a prince she’s never met from a land she’s never visited, potentially sacrificing love and happiness to benefit her starving kingdom. Not being the selfish sort, she agrees, and off they go.
As Elodie and her family sail into the swag-ass kingdom that’ll be her new home, omens loom in the fog: Two massive scary stone-carved dragons with flames burning in their throats. Egads! Once through the fog, they reach a decadently gilded kingdom with gorgeous gardens and castles that look so upper-crust, I’m sure they all have Really Long Fireplaces in them, just like in Christian Grey’s penthouse condo. The land is well stocked with the ripest fruit, hunkiest princes, goldest gold and CGIest CGI. The Queen (Robin Wright) greets them ceremoniously and the Prince (Nick Henderson) seems like a nice enough guy, and he takes Elodie on a perfectly charming Horse Date where she doesn’t sit sidesaddle and proves she can ride just as fast and as sturdy as any man.
Whether the Prince is intimidated or enamored is hard to tell, but it’s ultimately moot as a very moot thing. The day before the wedding, Stepmother catches quite a vibe from Queen Robin Wright, and warns Elodie that it’s not too late to back out. Meanwhile, Her Father The King looks… troubled. Yet she marches on. The next day handmaidens ceremoniously dress Elodie within an inch of her existence – poofy sleeves, misc. adornments, a skirt atop a skirt atop a skirt atop a skirt – and march her to the altar for the I Dos and just like that she’s hitched. And they lived happily ever after the end.
No! Everything’s going just smashingly as they carriage their way up to the mountainside for a post-wedding ceremony – no not that post-wedding ceremony, you horndogs will be disappointed to learn – bearing all manner of red flags, none more so than all the people hanging out there in Eyes Wide Shut masks. And so here we learn that the people in this kingdom belong to a dragon cult, and the dragon that lives in the mountain demands sacrifice. So the prince tosses poor Elodie into the crevasse so the beast can belch lava spew at her and make princess fricassee, making everything OK with the world until the next <title of movie> is duped. Thing is, these people and this dragon don’t realize what we realize and knew all along even before we hit play: they just f—ed with the wrong <title of movie>.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There are scenes in Damsel where Brown talks affectionately to iridescent cave slugs, and god help me if it didn’t bring to mind Ben Affleck and his beloved pet snails in Deep Water. Otherwise, the movie is like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves meets The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug meets, especially, The Princess, which executes a very similar premise, albeit with more chopsock choreography and no dragons.
Performance Worth Watching: As we learned in her previous roles, Brown is magnetic in her earnestness and tougher-than-she-seems persona. Although Damsel has her flexing those muscles, it doesn’t ask her to do much of substance beyond what we’ve already seen.
Memorable Dialogue: Yes, the dragon talks. It even gets to monologue away like every other lousy movie villain in lousy movies. It also sounds like Zuul from Ghostbusters. Anyhow, here’s a big momentous exchange:
Dragon: That won’t kill me, but it will make me angry.
Elodie: Good. I’m angry too.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Damsel is the type of movie that takes a lot of time showing us how elaborate the protagonist’s wedding dress is, and how long it takes to strap and cinch and paste it to her body, and then spends the rest of the movie ripping it to shreds. It’s symbolical, you see: They’re tearing apart the weary and oppressive standards of femininity in a grossly monarchical society! I’d say “patriarchal” but one of the key villains here is the shitty shitty Queen, so the film’s feminist tones are watered down to make way for, I guess, some even more watery criticism of Royal policy and hierarchy.
Anyway, we fully expect Elodie’s maxi to be rendered a mini by her harrowing ordeal, and she almost certainly will be very dirty and bruised by the end of it. That’s how these movies about quasi-empowerment work: The female protagonist’s makeup will be smudged and her high heels will be kicked off and it all will Mean Something. It’s a nice sentiment, but it’s getting to be a hacky trope now, so there’d better be some compelling storytelling and themes here, or a wily action sequence or two – or at least something to ignite Brown’s charisma.
Alas, I must open this paragraph with an “alas.” The movie does none of the above. It isn’t Brown’s fault at all; it leaves her afloat in a sea of mediocrity. Fresnadillo and scripter Dan Mazeau show little interest in defying thematic convention, or exploring any ideas in depth. That’s not a crime by any means, but our sense of involvement in the narrative is waylaid by boilerplate direction and a flattened Marvelesque visual palette, the action is acceptably unimpressive, and the script’s predictability undermines any attempt to generate suspense. Granted, there are a few avenues the story could take in the third act, but they’re all bromidic, underscored by the base conceit: Will Elodie slay ol’ Lava Lungs here, as many brave men before her failed to do? Of course she will. She can CHOP WOOD with the best of them, you know.
Our Call: Some might find Damsel acceptably watchable, which is kind of the M.O. of Netflix “blockbusters.” But honestly, we should have higher standards. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
