Film review: Damsel

Hello readers! This week I watched Damsel on Netflix, mostly out of morbid curiosity after seeing the trailer. To my surprise, I didn’t hate it – but I didn’t really like it either. Damsel is a “dark fantasy” film about a young woman (Millie Bobby Brown) trying to escape a dragon’s lair. It styles itself as “not a fairytale” in an effort to overturn stereotypes, but this concept has been done so many times before that every aspect of its story feels familiar. The result is a classic girlboss journey, where a woman embraces a very specific type of macho femininity in order to slay the day. The film also has a dragon in it. And Ray Winstone for some reason. But really, it doesn’t have much going for it – and if you subject yourself to the trailer, you’ll know exactly what to expect.

My spoiler-lite verdict

If you have literally nothing else to do on a desolate Thursday evening, you could do worse than Damsel. The storyline is predictable, always giving you plenty of notice before attempting a plot twist. Most of the dialogue is formulaic and superficial, offering only the bare minimum to flesh out a small selection of translucent characters. At the start of the film, there is some semblance of intrigue, but this doesn’t last long. A large chunk of the runtime is spent following Millie Bobby Brown around a cave, and that is about as interesting as it sounds. Maybe less. Really depends how much you like caves.

Still, there were some parts of this film that I appreciated. The extravagant costumes were clearly a passion project for some lucky creator, and the dragon design is also pretty good, although we don’t see enough of it. Overall, the film has just enough buoyancy to float above the bottom of the barrel, but I don’t expect that it will be remembered beyond next Tuesday. If you want to scratch a fantasy itch, it might do the trick. But if you’re looking for a story with meaning or emotional resonance, try elsewhere.

The rest of this review will contain spoilers. You have been warned.

A simple premise

In the beginning, there was some old guy with a crown and a sword. He decided to chase down a dragon with an insufficient number of soldiers, and in an entirely predictable turn of events, the dragon destroyed them. This might sound like a straightforward introduction for an antagonist, but no: the dragon remains hidden from us, always out of shot or out of focus. Either the dragon is camera-shy, or the animation budget is dragon-shy – and the result is a comically bad action sequence where unnamed actors in their ren faire finest get kebabbed by a tail popping in from stage left.

The story jumps forward a few centuries, into a desolate valley where Millie Bobby Brown has felled an entire forest singlehandedly. We are left in no doubt that this is a young woman who gets stuff done. She has an axe, dammit – so don’t you dare question why a young noblewoman is out here cutting trees unsupervised. The trees had it coming.

The name of our #strong-female-protagonist is Elodie, and her father is the lord of a small, ramshackle village. Times are tough, and this is explained to us in no uncertain terms as Elodie distributes her hard-earned logs to shivering peasants. In fact, times are so tough that her father has agreed to marry her off to some prince in a distant kingdom that nobody knew existed. We never learn the name of the kingdom where Elodie lives, or her place in it. This film doesn’t have time for geopolitics. Who wants a fantasy world with history or geography (other than everyone)?

So, just like that, Elodie and her father, younger sister, and stepmother set off to meet this promised prince. Is Elodie daunted by the prospect of being married off to a stranger? A bit. The film skirts around the issue rather than tackling it directly – and perhaps this is for the best. The log-chopping introduction made it perfectly clear that this is a film about female empowerment, not subjugation. It can’t possibly explore both at once.

Also, Elodie’s father is Ray Winstone. I’ll just throw that out there. We have Elodie, who speaks as if she suffered elocution lessons at boarding school, and then we have Ray Winstone, who speaks like Ray Winstone. Is there a canonical reason for this bizarre casting choice? You bet there isn’t.

Welcome to Portugal

Elodie arrives in Aurea, a beautiful kingdom of Portuguese monasteries, Portuguese vineyards, and Portuguese mountains, all of which make you want to visit Portugal. We aren’t given any indication of the size of this kingdom (only later is there a throwaway line about it being an island) or the number of people who live there. Again, the geopolitics don’t matter. This film is about a strong female protagonist and therefore needs no context.

In Aurea we meet Prince Henry, and the following fifteen minutes are the most engaging part of the film. Elodie and Henry get to know each other, and although the screenplay steers well clear of exploring the murky depths of forced marriage, we get the faintest whiffs of intrigue (am I getting… cheesy?). Elodie spends some quality time with her sister, making sure to talk about their mother as well as Henry, so that this film passes the Bechdel Test. Then, late at night, she sees torches shining on the mountain behind the castle. Something is afoot. Henry says that it is a sacred ritual of the royal family – certainly nothing to worry about. Just don’t ask for the whereabouts of that timid-looking girl you saw on the day you arrived (seriously, she’s fiiiiiine).

The next day, Elodie marries Henry. Her family wave her goodbye, and then it’s off to visit the mountain to enjoy some sacred royal traditions. Somehow, everyone else from the wedding ceremony is already there, waiting – presumably they took a shortcut? Their creepy golden masks are a bit much, but we’re left to assume that there is some historical reason for this (audience preconceptions doing the heavy lifting here). Also, the queen wants to cut the newlyweds’ hands and mingle their blood, which is a bit weird, but sure. When in Portugal and all that.

And then Henry chucks Elodie down a big hole.

Screaming and spelunking

From here, the film goes downhill. Brace yourselves for over an hour of spelunking shenanigans, as Elodie squeezes her way through a weirdly simple cave system, chased by an angry dragon. As with any outdoor exploit, most of the tension arises through her inappropriate clothing choices. There are several scenes of Millie Bobby Brown having to tear off yet another bit of her dress to get past some obstacle, be that a narrow gap, an even narrower gap, or a wall o’ crystals. Prepare to hear a lot of screaming and yelling and crying, because Elodie can’t do anything quietly. I appreciate that most of us would be doing a fair amount of sobbing and shrieking if we were put in this situation, but that doesn’t make it entertaining. It’s just awkward.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect is that the dragon is still camera shy, centuries after the prologue. It lurks behind rocky pillars, behind icicles, and even behind the camera, and we are left to assume how terrifying it is based on the pitch of Elodie’s screams. I can see what the director was trying to do here, keeping the audience guessing how scary the dragon must be, but it’s maddening. If anything, the tension is reduced when we’re left ignorant to the threat. Elodie could be running from an angry iguana for all we know (I probably would be).

Damsel in distress

Although this film advertises itself as a #strong-female-protagonist empowerment story, it falls face flat at the final hurdle. Elodie only survives the dragon cave thanks to Ray Winstone coming to rescue her, bringing ropes and soldiers. In fact, the first time we see the dragon in all its glory is when he first enters the cave, well past halfway into the film. What are we meant to take from this? Is there some deeper meaning? Definitely not.

In an entirely predictable turn of events, Elodie’s father dies so that she can survive. She uses his rope to pull herself out of the cave, and then we are finally free! But only for five minutes. Now that Elodie has angered the dragon, her little sister gets thrown in the hole instead – so of course our titular damsel goes straight back down the hole to rescue her.

The film ends with a mediocre fight between Elodie and the dragon. Rather than slaying it, she convinces it that they have both been duped, and that they should join forces to defeat their common enemy. Yes, this dragon has killed countless innocent women over the years, under the illusion that it was killing the young daughters of the royal family – but that’s an easy mistake to make, right? The film wholeheartedly endorses the dragon’s right to revenge, and Elodie takes it back to the castle to wreak some havoc and toast some Henry. Having wrought their revenge, she and the dragon sail off into the sunset, happily ever after.

The dragon looked cool though

Even if this film lacked heart and integrity, it is mostly harmless. It doesn’t have a message, and it doesn’t empower women. It does, however, have a pretty cool dragon design (once we finally get to see it). I think they did a really good job with that one. Also, I really like the way that the dragon spews burning liquid rather than just flames. The animation of the blazing liquid splattering on cave walls is genuinely fascinating to watch.

Another thing… The film suddenly turned brutal about 30 minutes from the end. Until then, we only had to deal with the incineration of single-use soldiers and some grisly burns (soon cured by strips of torn-up dress). Then, suddenly, we see Ray Winstone being squished like a tomato and an innocent horse getting eviscerated. Now, squishing Ray Winstone I can just about handle, but I actually gasped when the horse got torched. It was so uncalled for. The dragon saw that it didn’t have a rider, looked angry, and then chundered napalm over it anyway. I’m sorry, but there is no way that this dragon should ever have been allowed to fly into the happily-ever-after sunset.

In summary…

I sacrificed my Thursday evening to save you from two hours of lacklustre fantasy. Damsel has been getting panned by critics, but it isn’t offensively bad. Maybe it only deserves a little pan, like those ones for frying individual eggs (and that’s a chicken egg, not a dragon egg, before I start a centuries-long blood feud). This film doesn’t go anywhere or do anything, and the result is underwhelming. Although it sells itself as empowering, Damsel undermines itself by taking a shallow approach to sensitive, complex subjects. Its title attempts irony, but this was still a story about a damsel being saved by a knight in shining armour. If you want fantasy with bite, meaning, or ambition, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Happy reading (or watching), and have a lovely week!