Don't mind me. I'm just here for the screaming British woman (Review: 'Damsel')

Millie Bobby Brown is very much one of the main attractions of Netflix. At least they seem to think so, considering that they make big films centred around her, with The Electric State coming next.

Now, I wouldn't call myself a massive fan of the woman in Stranger Things (I prefer other characters in that), but she's pretty charming in Enola Holmes and when I saw this movie was coming out, I decided that there are worse ways to spend two commutes. I watched this on my tablet, so I didn't notice the CGI issues.

So anyway, my thoughts on this:

• The movie takes rather a long time to get going. It's about thirty minutes before Elodie is yeeted into the dragon pit.
• MBB is admittedly one of the common type of "slightly haughty posh British actresses"; or that's the sort of roles she plays outside of Stranger Things. Playing a noble lady therefore comes across as fine, but without a great dialogue coach, she's not going to pass as a shop assistant from Romford, unlike say Michelle Dockery.
• Elodie screams a lot. Like seriously a lot. In fairness, much of it is in circumstances where screaming is to be expected, but MBB is definitely getting the reputation as a scream queen out of this. The actress has a wonderfully expressive face and can do a range of emotions very well; there's a good overall progression to her arc in this movie. A movie openly feminist and released on International Women's Day to boot.
• Another aspect is that this is basically "Millie Bobby Brown does a striptease". Well, part of one. Her dress gets progressively torn to shreds over the course of the movie and by the end, she's gone from "royal ball" to "Romford nightclub and having fallen down the escalator at the Brewery". She gets some fairly nasty injuries, but most of them are healed and nothing ends up detracting from her beauty at the end of it.
• There's some deep horror stuff in all of this, because Elodie isn't the first young woman to have been fed to this particular dragon by a long chalk.
• The plot is a pretty good one, although some of the character motivations at the end are a bit odd and the conclusion of the story leaves some big questions open about the future.
• Shohreh Aghdashloo has exactly the right sort of voice you'd want for a dragon; reminding me of the late Sir John Hurt in Merlin.
• Ray Winstone does Ray Winstone, just Ray Winstone with a castle. Now, I say that Pegasus was a one-trick pony, but I get a feeling that he was slightly miscast in this one.
• Robin Wright as an evil queen is arguably the best of the rest of the cast; one notes that one of her early roles was of course in The Princess Bride. None of the others really stand out.
• One can't help but notice the resemblance in names between "Elodie" and "Eleven". No-one makes an "El-o-die" pun, which is a pity.

Conclusion

A decent enough film, but not a true great. Definitely saved by Millie Bobby Brown.

7/10