Damsel

Damsel Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Angela Bassett, Brooke Carter, Nick Robinson, Robin Wright

Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

What’s Good: Millie Bobby Brown has a striking screen presence

What’s Bad: The story

Loo Break: You can if you fail to survive the boredom

Watch or Not?: Rewatch the trailer, and that’s it

Language: English

Available On: Netflix

Runtime: 1 hour 49 minutes

User Rating:

In Damsel, Princess Elodie is married off to Prince Henry. From the outside, it looks like a fairy tale story. But Henry’s family sacrifices Elodie’s life to save their bloodlines. They throw her into a cave where a fire-spitting dragon resides, hungry for royal blood. It’s a story of this Damsel who is in distress but has no one to save her.

Damsel Movie Review: Script Analysis

In the Netflix film Damsel, Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone) fixes his daughter Elodie’s (Millie Bobby Brown) marriage with Prince Henry (Nick Robinson) to save their kingdom. Elodie agrees to take this bold and risky step without questioning her father’s decision. All of this happens in the first 30 minutes, and the rest of the film is about Elodie fighting the dragon to save herself.

From a fantasy drama, the Millie Bobby Brown starrer turns into a survival thriller and not a good one. There’s nothing really going on in the story. It’s just an extended version of everything we see in the trailer. We know that Elodie isn’t someone whom any Prince will save. So, there’s a predictability factor in the narrative that will conclude in Elodie’s favour. It’s a basic story with nothing extraordinary going on.

Writer Dan Mazeau aimed to tell us the story of a girl who can fight for herself. But his fantasy drama is full of stereotypes. From how the characters speak to how the girls obey everything the elders tell them, there’s hardly any voice for women; except for Queen Isabelle. We hardly know anything about Elodie except for the fact that she was used as a sacrificial lamb and now has no option but to become a “warrior”. You keep waiting for one moment that will amaze you, and you keep waiting, and eventually, the movie ends.

Damsel Movie Review: Star Performance

Millie Bobby Brown performs Princess Elodie with utmost honesty. Sadly, her character lacks depth, just like the story. Hence, there aren’t any moments where she gets to show her true potential. However, yet again, the Stranger Things star has proven that she can easily fit into a setting of any era after Enola Holmes. Robin Wright plays the cliched evil Queen who loves controlling her son. Even a talent like Angela Bassett is wasted in the story.

The rest of the cast play their parts satisfactorily, but don’t offer much to the feeble plot.