‘Damsel’ Review
There’s an approach that filmmakers have taken to the fantasy genre in recent years, specifically with an eye on race and gender, that excitingly challenges narrative expectations and tropes. Due to the potential that genre films tend to feature thanks to room for imagination and breaking away from reality only to mirror it back on audiences, it’s been a fruitful time for fantasy, science fiction, and horror audiences. The damsel-in-distress is a particularly annoying cliche that tends to litter fantasy literature and media to this day. Much like 2022’s The Princess, which subverted many fairytale tropes in its action-fantasy execution, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) has returned from a relatively lengthy break from feature-length directing with Damsel. Beholden to its fantasy setting but featuring an interesting survivalist thriller bent to its narrative, his latest is an underwhelming and disappointing upending of the fairytale wedding. Occasionally imaginative but devoid of emotion, Damsel offers little new to its genre and wastes the few satisfying angles it conjures.
Millie Bobby Brown leads the film as Elodie, the titular damsel who is suddenly married off by her father, Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone), to the son of a royal family. Her marriage to Prince Henry (Nick Robinson) will help ensure the survival of Lord Bayford’s people, and on the surface, it seems that it will be a pleasant relationship for Elodie. An adventurous, strong-willed woman at the outset of Damsel, she is eventually charmed by Prince Henry, and their hasty marriage goes off without a hitch…that is until she is suddenly thrown into a dragon’s lair. After a gradual set-up where Prince Henry and his mother’s, Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright), sinister intentions are easily ascertained by an attentive viewer, the film shifts gears into a survival thriller as Elodie is confronted by a dragon (voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo) hellbent on her demise.
That tonal shift is far more exciting than the build-up towards it. While it takes its time lulling Elodie into a false sense of safety, it also struggles to hide its deception. A cold performance from Wright and an early confrontation from Elodie’s stepmother, Lady Bayford (Angela Bassett), heavily signal an incoming darkness that spells certain doom for Elodie. As a result, nothing before the turn of events in Damsel feels character-focused. Even worse, the only character who ends up feeling like they have a sort of arc in this feminist-fronting screenplay is Elodie’s father, whose decision to sell his own daughter is instantly a source of grief that eats away at him from the outset. It’s somewhat contrived, too, but at least Winstone is there to carry the emotional load to the finish line.
The problem is Dan Mazeau’s screenplay, which gets to the interesting horror-adjacent survival element of the film - ultimately, the centerpiece and main allure of Damsel - only to struggle to make that compelling. While Brown certainly sells the damsel-in-distress character she’s served and does so with a tenacity that befits the resourceful character, her performance cannot solve the film’s relative uninterest in its genre trappings. It spends so much time building to its main draw that it paces itself as if it wants nothing but to escape the cave. The sense of struggle is hardly there as Elodie lucks her way throughout the cave, stumbling upon clues and remnants from the dragon’s past victims as if she’s suddenly found herself in the world of Lordran from the popularly brutal video game Dark Souls. There’s this survival element, and by the end of the film, Elodie has gone through the wringer and looks the part, but it never feels like she’s gone through unspeakable torment.
A video game is what Elodie’s plight turns into, and it’s rife with all the same reductive qualities in its character work and narrative. Elodie doesn’t struggle as much as she persists, which is only compelling if her character has any emotional weight to it. Yet, at every turn, the screenplay devolves into basic tropes and undercuts characters to benefit its narrative. It ranks one above the other, as opposed to understanding the mutual benefit they have for each other. The difficulties faced by Elodie only seem perilous for a fleeting moment before the screenplay rushes to a resolution, and despite having alone time with the character, Elodie is only given time to reflect when it might lead to a sense of tension. The film does not care about its damsel; it cares about its fantasy setting.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the film’s production and costume design. When first arriving at Queen Isabelle’s kingdom, it is generic and lavish in the exact way necessary for films of this style. It’s what is hiding under the predictability that is far more enticing. The wedding, in particular, features costuming that feels like an entire backstory was cut out to keep things focused and on track. There’s no room for the pace to become languid, leaving Fresnadillo’s world to have to speak for itself. Dragon statues immersed in fog line the waters at the entrance of the Queen’s kingdom, and regal costumes that lean heavily on sharp edges and simple color schemes present a kingdom different from what is shown to Elodie’s family upon their arrival. It’s not exceptional because the writing just isn’t there to support it, but there’s an obvious attempt to do more with the world of Damsel that doesn’t manifest.
The saving grace is that the dragon and every scene involving the dragon captures the ferocity and scale of the character. Aghdashloo gives a strong voice performance, as she has done in many video games at this point, and deserves all the credit for being able to instill the film with an emotional heartbeat. The dragon is the most interesting character, though the reasons for the dragon being given so many princesses to feed on are not inherently compelling. It’s more just fun to watch a cat-and-mouse game play out between the dragon and Elodie, no matter how brief that ends up being. It’s a testament to Aghdashloo’s performance that the interactions are compelling at all because both characters are given very little room to explore their characters and instead have to form a dynamic based on fairly simplistic conversations that boil down to a mutual understanding of how each other feels without having the time to flesh it out. The dragon’s presence does just enough to amplify some of the tension, action, and emotion missing in Damsel throughout its entire runtime.
There’s so much lacking in Fresnadillo’s latest film that it makes it more frustrating how the elements are all there for a more enjoyable experience. Settling on just being a story of a woman surviving tragedy is sufficient in most cases, but because the film is so centered on its narrative, it doesn’t conclude with any genuine emotional catharsis or evolution for the character. There’s a resolution, but it’s underwhelming. What’s worse is that it has a dark atmosphere that slowly seeps into the narrative, but it is soon discarded for pulpy thrills that are occasionally creative but generally unremarkable. Tension is almost always removed as quickly as it’s introduced. It leaves a film that fits its unique ingredients within a familiar mold - effectively squandering its potential because it doesn’t desire to be more than just serviceable. Even in that, it barely accomplishes the slightest of thrills.
