After a decade of having a creative partner who literally has compiled over 4,000 pitches for possible movie and TV concepts, it was inevitable that Hollywood would eventually get close to some of them. This has happened before a few times, again given the significant library of my friend’s imagination, but never has it gotten as close as Damsel, Netflix’s new action fantasy film flipping the script of the shrinking violet being sacrificed to the clutches of a monster. In my friend’s pitch, the young girl is presented to a dragon with the implication that this regular offering will spare her small town from angry dragon fire. Just as she’s waiting to be eaten, the dragon undoes her bindings and they talk, because the dragon can talk, and he’s very curious why these people keep leaving him young girls every so many years. The revelation is that the dragon is not savage but intelligent, and the two bond, forming a partnership where she brings the dragon back to her community and shows them the error of their long-standing prejudices. Of course it all gets bigger from there, with warring kingdoms wanting to harness the last dragon to capture this unparalleled weapon of mass destruction. There was even a budding romance between the dragon and the young woman, with the possibility of the dragon turning into a human Beauty and the Beast-style. The title: Damsel. While my friend’s Damsel and Netflix’s Damsel have some core similarities, they do tell different stories built upon the same premise of the virgin sacrifice and the killer creature being more than what they seem.

Unfortunately, Netflix’s version is too narrow to be fully satisfying with its fairy tale script flip. We have Millie Bobby Brown as our titular damsel, Elodie, a woman trying to do well for her family, notably her father (Ray Winstone), stepmother (Angela Bassett), and younger sister. The young prince needs a bride, and the Queen (Robin Wright) isn’t too shy to still turn up her nose at her new in-laws that she sees as merely a means to an end, nothing more. Of course it’s revealed that this end is as “human sacrifice” to a dragon that has reportedly stalked the kingdom for centuries. Elodie is thrown down a vast canyon into the lair of an angry dragon (voiced by the unmistakable Shohreh Aghdashloo). From there, Elodie must use her wits to survive the dragon, escape above ground, and save her younger sister from being doomed to a similar fate.

The premise is so strong, upending ages-old tropes of the female sacrifice and the monstrous creature, as even with Netflix’s Damsel the dragon is a victim of historical slander. There’s so many places you can go with this, especially building upon the dynamic of the two of these discarded outcasts banding together to push back against the cruelty of society. However, that’s not the movie Netflix’s Damsel becomes. It sort of is, at the very end in resolution, with a latent promise of possible further adventures, but it’s mostly a locked-in survival thriller.

I was not expecting the majority of Damsel to be Elodie’s basic survival once she’s been hurled into the pit by her recently dearly beloved (just following orders from mom, he says). It works, but it feels very constrained creatively. Now, I am generally a fan of these kinds of stories, the step-by-step survival tales where we are thinking alongside the plucky protagonist. I find them fun and follow a satisfying structure of amassing payoffs. It’s naturally enjoyable to watch a character tackle problems and succeed. However, it’s also vital that the audience understands the problem to know the challenge. In a fantasy setting, this requires more time to establish new rules and circumstances. Here we have a few sequences like when Elodie discovers bio-luminescent slugs and uses them as a light source for exploring her captivity (bonus: their sticky slime is healing). The timeline is relatively short, maybe a day at most, so it’s not like Elodie has to think about long-term survival; it’s much more immediate about escaping from the wrath of the predator. Just finding a safe hiding spot is enough. It’s engaging but by limiting the focus to an almost real-time survival cat-and-mouse game, it caps the movie’s creative possibility. I was far more interested in the prospect of eventually moving beyond the initial amity between Elodie and the dragon, where they could share their royal rage together. I kept waiting for this initial battle to give way into a different level of understanding, something to deepen and alter this relationship, but this doesn’t arrive until the very resolution of an hour after Elodie first hides from the fearsome dragon.

While I was never bored by watching Elodie think how to get over a crevasse, or how to navigate a treacherous pass, I was reminded of 2022’s The Princess, a spirited and gleefully violent feminist romp with a similar starting point of a damsel taking matters into her own hands and fighting for her freedom. With that film, the upturned premise was simple, but each new floor down the tower revealed something about our heroine, each new challenge was different and relied upon a different skill or tactic. Unfortunately, that movie was “deleted” from the Disney/Fox/Hulu library for tax purposes, though you can still rent or purchase it on Amazon but, as of now, no physical media exists. This is an excellent example of a movie with a limited scope that knows how to play to the limitations of story while still revealing character through action. While that movie lost some momentum and clarity when the princess was kicked out of her tower imprisonment, I found much to celebrate with the movie’s ingenuity and spirit. With Netflix’s Damsel, I was getting antsy to leave the cave and move things along. The twist about the true nature of the dragon, and her past with the legendary royal hero, should be obvious to most.

Let it be said that this is where Brown (Enola Holmes) graduated to being a steely and capable adult actress. She’s the star of the movie and has to command our attention and hold it for long stretches on her own. Brown throws herself into the physicality of the role with a relish that only makes her eventual triumph feel that much more worthy. The side characters don’t amount to much but have reliably winning actors to draw our attention. Aghdashloo (The Expanse) is a wonderful scene companion even with only a smoky voice. Wright (Wonder Woman) is haughty to the point of thin-lipped camp. Although this is a criminal under-utilization of the talents of Bassett (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), who plays the concerned stepmother. That’s what happens when most of your movie is about one girl in a cave. The other characters are confined to the opening and closing of your survival thriller.

I suppose I’m being cheeky by referring to the movie as “Netflix’s Damsel” considering there isn’t any other version out there. I’m not accusing Netflix or screenwriter Dan Mazeau (Wrath of the Titans, Fast X) of ripping off my friend; it’s more an example of parallel thinking playing around with old fantasy tropes and giving them a new spin for modern times. I mostly enjoyed Netflix’s Damsel but couldn’t help but wonder what might have been, not just with my friend’s competing take on the material but with the story possibilities not taken here thanks to its limited scope. As a survival thriller in a fantasy setting, it works. There was just more that could have been, and while I should judge the movie that exists rather than the movie that could have been, Netflix’s Damsel is a fantasy action vehicle that swings its sword ably but had so much more potential to slay.

Nate’s Grade: B-