Damsel scratches my epic fantasy itch…. and I’m surprised to say that given how the movie gets off to such a generic bouncy shiny YA start. It takes its sweet time to drop its gloves and go bare knuckle on a surprisingly brutal dragonslayer tale. This is right up my Tolkien/Martin/Brooks alley… good old fashioned fantasy violence with a tenacious, vengeful barbarian queen.

The flick is about a fantasy princess who marries the prince of another realm… only to be betrayed and thrown to the dragon. She must scramble and dodge and leap to safety, all the while losing the frippery of her wedding gown as the dragon chases her through its lair.

Yeah, don’t be fooled by the fairy tale first act… it looks like generic fairy tale fantasy and they play into it. Hell, they even hired the Princess Bride herself (Robin Wright) to put a sheen on things. And perhaps they hold their cards for too long… only the fact the intro shows knights burned alive by a dragon even hints at a darker edge.

Once we get into the dragon’s lair does the movie show its claw, claw, bite. The princess gets burned, slashed, pummeled, and nearly ground to mash. She takes heavy damage… and while I might be skeptical of her range as a sudden action hero, I’ll allow it because Millie Bobbie Brown channels some of that Eleven rage to turn in a surprisingly tenacious performance. She’s kind of a badass… though I think other actresses could have pulled it off better. But she’s convincing enough.

The longer the movie goes, the more brutal it gets. I was rooting for our newly minted barbarian queen and I was grinning wicked at the dragon’s wrath. Perhaps I’d have preferred a silent animalistic dragon but, if a dragon has to talk, the smoky grind of Shohreh Aghdashloo is definitely a good choice.

I suspect I’ll be out in front of this film, waving its banner while everyone else holds back (it’s a Netflix film afterall… better sharpen those knives). But this is my fantasy reading gristle. The kind of stuff that invited me into speculative fiction and didn’t let go. And if you like that sort of thing, give it a chance… maybe you’ll like the first act, maybe you won’t… but once you get past it, there’s definitely something cool to come.

Score: 86