Starring Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Angela Bassett, Brooke Carter, Nick Robinson, Robin Wright, Mlo Twomey, Nicole Joseph and Shoreh Agdashloo

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Netflix

Elodie and Floria are the children of Lord and Lady Bayford, the rulers of a tiny settlement in the frozen North. Short on supplies and prospects, they are stunned to find a letter from Queen Isabelle of Aurea, proposing a marriage between Elodie and her son, Prince Henry. It seems too good to be true. It is.

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is responsible for two of my favourite movies so far this century, Intacto and 28 Weeks Later. The first is a remarkably grounded supernatural thriller about luck as a transferable energy and the second is a remarkable piece of rescue fiction and one of the few horror sequels that’s at the very least as good as the original. He brings that same sense of the pragmatic fantastic to Damsel and the movie’s atmosphere remains one of its strongest points. Larry Fong’s cinematography and Fresnadillo’s direction give the movie some jaw dropping moments of visual invention. A flock of burning birds, the razor sharp vertical shaft Elodie must climb to escape and the mountains swathed in fire as the dragon searches for Elodie are the exact sort of moments that fantasy cinema excels at. Colossal, terrifying, awesome in the most literal sense.

The tone is unusual, and very effective too. This is a horror movie, and the only people who don’t know that are the main characters. The first sights of the Aurea harbour, drenched in fog and bracketed by dragon statues would be enough to drive most people away but Elodie and her family don’t have that choice, or choose not to. That sense of unease mounts as the movie continue too, and the first act payoff is a moment made all the more sickening by the fact we see it coming.

It’s a shame then that the rest of the movie never quite hits as hard as the opening. The premise is fantastic, and if ever there was a time for a fantasy movie about the parasitic upper classes, it’s now. There are moments and beats that work, and the casting of Shoreh Agdashloo as the voice of the dragon is inspired, but the movie never quite settles on whether it wants to be a light fantasy film or a bloody-teethed roar of fury. It should be the second far more than it is. Robin Wright, Angela Bassett and Ray Winstone all do excellent work with horribly under-written characters. Nick Robinson as Prince Harry too gets exactly one scene and is then reduced to window dressing. The core issue here is so good, so necessary that every time it’s returned to it lights the screen up. Every time it’s skipped over, the film fades and it’s skipped over far too often.

Unfortunately, a big part of the issue is Elodie herself. Millie Bobby Brown is an actress whose entire career has shown she’s got the skills to make Elodie a compelling lead. From her profanity laden debut in Intruders through Eleven and Enola Holmes her wit and energy shines through. Here, there’s just not much for her to work with past that first act. Elodie should be an incredible lead, a princess who thinks she’s in a fairy tale but is actually in a horror story. Instead she presents like a mildly startled member of the Windsors. Nicole Joseph as Floria has even less to do and given the princesses are at the core of the issue, that’s a vacuum the movie never recovers from.

Verdict: Damsel is fun, but it could, and should, be so much better than it is. The spark of that first act, for all the fire and fury of the third, never quite ignites and the movie ends where it promised to begin; at the start of a very different kind of fairy tale. It’s still fun, but it’s not much more than that. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart