When you hear the word damsel, you think of the phrase “damsel in distress”.
Yes, she is a damsel, but Millie Bobby Brown’s character, Elodie, is not in distress. She proved that she could escape danger without anyone’s help. Damsel is an action and adventure movie with a twist of dark fantasy that helped me stay interested.
Elodie is the daughter of Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone) and step-daughter of Lady Bayford (Angela Bassett), who is a likable and loving stepmother despite the typical movie stereotypes of evil stepmothers. Elodie is very close with her sister Floria (Brooke Carter), who ends up needing to be saved by Elodie later in the film.
Other supporting characters include the charming Prince Henry (Nick Robinson) whom Elodie is set to marry. The marriage was arranged to help save her and her father’s people from the barren land and lack of riches in exchange for the marriage of Elodie to Henry. Henry’s family consists of King Roderick (Milo Twomey) and Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright) who hold dark secrets from Elodie and her family before the marriage.
The idea of betrayal and secrets are common topics and themes in fantasy films and for films set in early, royal times. Damsel is completely based on those ideas, therefore creating a movie based on very basic ideas that sometimes get repetitive and unoriginal. Fortunately, Damsel has Brown as a strong female lead who is a talented and beloved actress whose character can prove herself to be more than just a newly crowned, helpless princess.
The betrayal and secrets, of course, come from the wealthy royal family that Elodie is marrying into. She doesn’t have a clue about it until she is tossed by Prince Henry into a pit inside of a mountain. The secret is that every generation, the family has to sacrifice three girls with their royal blood to a dragon. They do this by marrying a girl into the family and cutting her hand and a royal’s hand before putting them together. This combines the royals’ blood with the girl’s, making her blood smell of royalty to trick the dragon. After this and being tossed, her adventure begins.
The storyline is well thought out and was interesting enough to hold my attention throughout the entire movie. Although relatively predictable, there were elements of surprise or twists that were perfectly timed throughout that became very necessary to keep the movie intriguing as it dragged on.
The visual effects of Damsel were superb for the most part, creating a fantastical and enchanting atmosphere. The castle was beautiful and seemed like they filmed in a real castle. The landscape was also breathtaking, with beautiful forests and life, and the kingdom as a whole was visually appealing. In the mountain and the caves, the majority of the time the CGI was pretty convincing, but some fantastical elements had moments that were not totally convincing or as flawless as they should have been.
The dragon was beautifully imagined, she didn’t look like the stereotypical dragon that attacks a kingdom. Her body was imaginative and looked different from any dragon I’ve ever seen in any other movie or show. Unfortunately being made of CGI, she did have her flaws and didn’t look real as much as she should have in some shots.
Damsel was neatly structured into thirds. The first third of the movie introduces the main characters, the wedding, and the ceremonial sacrifice. The second third is Elodie’s journey through the caves that are hidden in the dragon’s mountain as the dragon searches for her and she tries to find an escape route. The final third of the movie is when Elodie finally does get out of the mountain, but she goes back in to save her sister, who was sacrificed after the royals discovered that she had escaped.
The fact that there were not a lot of different ideas being expressed besides those three sections of the movie definitely made it seem like the whole hour and fifty minutes long. But, it kept the focus on Elodie and didn’t unnecessarily branch off into weird or irrelevant directions, which I liked.
Damsel was an excellent twist on the idea of a “damsel in distress” and Millie Bobby Brown helped to fulfill the movie’s full potential, thus creating an entertaining movie that was worth the watch.
