'Damsel': Millie Bobby Brown, neither princess nor dragon

Damsel

is an adventure and survival film, a dark fairy tale made for the greater glory of its protagonist, Millie Bobby Brown, the star of the Netflix series

Stranger Things.

Much older and without much of her childhood charisma, the British actress is the center of the new feature film by Canarian director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who returns after an intense journey making television in Hollywood and 13 years after his last film,

Intruso

( 2011).

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Fresnadillo's international vocation was always there.

His short film

Esposados

​​obtained an Oscar nomination in 1997 and since then all his projects have demonstrated his ambition to erase borders, also those of the genres that interest him most: thriller

,

fantasy, horror... His penchant for dark fables , between the fatality of destiny and the most primal fears, was in

Intacto

(2001), his very interesting debut feature film;

in

28 Weeks Later

(2007), a notable sequel to Danny Boyle's zombie film

28 Days Later,

and in the disturbing

Intruder.

Robin Wright, in 'Damsel'.

But the daring of his previous filmography barely appears in

Damsel,

or only does so—and never completely—when the adventure rushes toward a survival story inside a cave.

It is in the more physical sequences that Fresnadillo's pulse can be best guessed.

However, the film is hampered from beginning to end by the poor acting skills of its star, who unfolds without much conviction into a double-faced character: a sweet damsel who, after marrying a prince, finds herself involved in a bloody sacrifice in which an old dragon will be his main enemy.

Despite being supported by much more reliable performers than her - such as Robin Wright, Angela Bassett or Nick Robinson - Millie Bobby Brown (who is also an executive producer of the film) sucks on the plan (and algorithm) in an adventure film that is presented as the reverse of a tale of princesses and dragons and that in its mix of genres and references - from

King Kong

to

Game of Thrones

and even

Alien

- is too obvious.

More information

Read all the movie reviews here

Although perhaps the most shocking decision of the film, and the one that demonstrates its lack of trust in the viewer, is that the monster of the film, its vengeful dragon, speaks.

It is not that a monster cannot speak, it is that the excess of explanation of an old dragon only reveals a contemporary evil: the continuous underestimation of the intelligence of the spectators.

Damsel

Director:

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

Starring:

Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Robin Wright, Angela Bassett, Shohreh Aghdashloo.

Genre:

adventure.

United States, 2024.

Platform:

Netflix.

Duration:

108 minutes.

Premiere: March 8.

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