Damsel

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on March 21, 2024.

(M) ★★★

Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

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

"M'lady, your scaffolding is showing!"

What if the Knight In Shining Armour didn't rescue the Damsel In Distress, and said Damsel had to do her own arse-kicking?

That's the central premise of this surprisingly brutal revisionist fairy tale, which flips a bunch of fantasy tropes on their heads and gives us a dragon-battling heroine who definitely doesn't need a Prince Charming to save the day.

Brown is the titular princess, married off to a handsome prince (Robinson) to save her people, but who finds that wedded bliss is fleeting thanks to a hungry dragon with a taste for royal blood (the actual blood of royalty, not the band).

There's not a lot going on in this fractured fairy tale, but what it does, it does well. Even though the End of Act I Twist is visible from a mile away, the film doesn't take too long getting to it, and from there Damsel straps on its sword and rides into the breach with conviction and a single-mindedness that's impressive. It's only when the film drifts into imagined flashbacks and impossible knowledge that things get off the track, but for the most part it sticks to flipping the script on ye olde Damsel In Distress cliche, and makes it work.

Brown more than holds her own as the resourceful princess unwilling to go down without a fight. The script doesn't make her out to be superhuman, and Brown imbues her with the right mix of determination and fragility. In a fantastical world, she remains believable and empathetic. 

She's the shining light in a strong cast, with Winstone, Wright and Bassett all doing well with what are essentially bit parts in Millie Bobby Brown Versus The Dragon. As for the Dragon, voiced with menace by Aghdashloo, she's an interesting character. The CG is occasionally ropey, which is a let down, but at least it doesn't come off as yet another Smaug clone.

But that's the point here - to not do the things the other fantasy stories do. Somehow it still feels familiar, and the story is either thin or focussed, depending on how you look at it, but it works. Damsel certainly isn't the first film to flip a fairy tale with a feminist rewrite - Tangled and Frozen come to mind - but it does it in a way that is satisfying and true to its intentions. There's certainly a lot more third-degree burns and charred corpses in this one, too.

Damsel isn't going to win any awards, but there are far worse fantasy films out there.