Review of Damsel, directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

There was a time in 2024 where I had way too much free space in my schedule, and I watched a ton of movies. Most of it when was when I finished my master’s degree and was waiting for my flight to Korea a month and a half later, but then I had some free time when I returned from Korea and was waiting a ridiculously long time for my Indian visa to come through.

That said, I was watching a lot of movies during this time, and had no expectations on what I should watch and when I should watch it.

It was kind of a brain rot moment, as I wasn’t doing anything except producing blog posts and then actually sitting down to watch the movies I was watching about.

I had not heard of Damsels before I saw it pop up on my Netflix screen, but I waited a day after its release to see it was now the top movie on the platform.

I was curious as to why this was the case, as the plot given on Netflix seemed a bit generic, but I went ahead and watched the movie anyways because what else did I have to do at the time? Absolutely nothing.

Here’s my review and summary of it before I start rambling too much!

A young woman is tricked by her potential husband and is sacrificed to a dragon.

This is a story that has its origins centuries before the main plot: when a dragon begins to reside in a kingdom, the king of Aurea, the kingdom, decides to try and take it down. He fails miserably, with all of his warriors ending up dead, leaving him alone with the dragon.

We fast forward to the present day, where Elodie, our main character has received a marriage proposal. Her father is Lord Bayford, and the marriage proposal comes from the queen of Aurea. She wants Elodie to marry her son, and then they decide to agree upon it hoping that it can help their subjects.

Elodie arrives in Aurea, and at first she seems like she’s not very interested in her soon to be husband. They eventually get along though once they find they have a common interest, but Elodie’s stepmother believes this engagement to be very suspicious. She asks Elodie to end it, but that doesn’t happen.

The marriage day arrives, and they are taken to the mountains to partake in a ritual. It’s there Elodie realizes she was tricked, as when Henry takes her over a narrow walkway, he shoves her down into the abyss. Turns out the royal family has been luring women in and sacrificing them, explaining a story Isabelle, the Queen, was telling about the original king sacrificing his daughters.

The dragon then comes after Elodie in the caverns, and she scapes with only a burn on her leg. She finds a little cave where she can hide in without the dragon coming in, and the silk worms in there become a resource for her. But as she wanders deeper into the abyss, she discovers the previous victims’ names on a wall and a map.

She looks at the map and tries to scale a way out of there, but then it only leads her to a cliff that would definitely kill her. She also finds the dragon’s dead babies, which is why the dragon is so mad to begin with. It’s up here though that she finds a rescue team led by her father, which is a doomed effort as all of them are killed.

Elodie escapes while they’re being killed, grabbing one of their abandoned horses. The dragon comes after her and into the kingdom, which angers Isabelle, as their kingdom is now being razed by the dragon. She then kidnaps Elodie’s little sister as a sacrifice, and when Elodie finds this out, she heads back into the caves.

After yelling at her sister to hide, she tells the dragon they were both tricked. The dragon doesn’t believe her at first, but then she tricks the dragon into harming itself. After that, the dragon believes her. As the royal family prepares another sacrifice, Elodie tells the girl to run after showing up to the event.

The dragon then burns down the palace and everyone in it. Elodie then heads home with her family and the dragon.

Overall Thoughts

As I was continuing to watch this, I wondered if I really was the target audience for this movie. It was too fairy tale like in the sense that some of the plot points didn’t even make sense, such as the dragon believing Elodie and then going off with her into the sunset.

Like this was a solid movie to watch in terms of entertainment, but that doesn’t mean it was well-written really. I didn’t care much for the protagonist beyond being sympathetic to her plight and what she had to go through.

Taste is subjective though, so you might like it. That’s totally fine. Neither of us are wrong! That’s why movies are made for certain audiences in mind, but it just didn’t hit the right notes and storytelling themes for me this time.

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