Damsel is a dark riff on the classic fairy tale of a beautiful princess trapped by an evil dragon. Only here, as the title might suggest, the premise itself is a subversion. Far from a wilting flower, the titular damsel turns out to be a badass heroine. One who can take on a dragon any day of the week.
As far as ideas go, it’s not a bad one. There are many not bad ideas in Damsel. It is a shame that none of them go anywhere.
The setup is an enticing one. What if the promised happily ever after was nothing more than a sham, created to placate the terrible anger of an ancient being? What if, one day, that ancient being encountered a new type of hero? One overlooked by others because of their gender.
The film does a lot with its first half hour. We get an introduction to the distant kingdom, where Millie Bobby Brown’s character, Elodie, is to be wed. Covered in a thick fog with massive statues of fallen dragons lighting the way, it’s a moody and effective setting that promises a lot.
Then there’s Queen Isabel, played by an icy Robin Wright, who apparently dines on nothing but scenery. Nick Robinson plays the part of the useful idiot prince wonderfully, and the tone strikes the right balance between cheerful send up and eerie dread.
Once Elodie is thrust into the dragon’s cave, the film begins to lose steam. While the great Shohreh Aghdashloo is superb voicing the dragon, Brown just isn’t up to the task as an action hero.
Not that the film gives her much to do. Most of the runtime is spent on vignettes of her whimpering, hiding, gathering her girl power, and scowling. It’s somewhere in between Prey and The Descent, yet nowhere near as memorable or fun as either one.
Worse, Damsel mistakes lip service as thematics. There are multiple scenes featuring inklings of ideas about patriarchy, women’s suffrage, and self-worth, but they’re wholly unuseful when just mentioned. In one scene, Elodie discovers that she isn’t the first one to suffer this fate. Her fingers track bloody marks on a rock wall, where others wrote their names in a last attempt for remembrance.
It’s a brutally effective moment, one that could easily be a highlight of the film. But it doesn’t stop there. Instead, it builds to Elodie finding her inner strength to fight back and… remove her corset for a more action hero suitable look.
Sigh.
Part of this feels like a problem created in post-production. Something about Damsel feels off, like there’s half a film missing. At an hour and forty minutes, it’s not exactly short, but it does skip about. By the time it abruptly comes to an end, it wouldn’t be amiss to think you had fallen asleep and missed some crucial bit of the story.
But Damsel is so light on action, thrills, and scares that in cutting out any potential intrigue, it only makes the dull film shorter instead of more exciting. Brown does her best with a paper thin role, and Aghdashloo’s silky voice saves the day more than once. It’s just not enough to save an inherently limp picture.
It’s a case of wasted potential. A handsomely produced mini-epic, with a good idea and a great cast, that is neither here nor there in execution.
Maybe it’s because of too many cooks in the kitchen. Perhaps it’s a case of the filmmakers wanting a leaner, more brutally effective action film. That’s fine. We have oodles of them made exclusively for men. Most of those are mediocre, too.
It’s more than fair that we get some targeted for other audiences as well.
Damsel is available on Netflix.