Damsel

Damsel is a 2024 American dark fantasy film directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and written by Dan Mazo. Elodie, played by Millie Bobby Brown, accepts her marriage proposal, but she realizes that she is being used to pay off old royal debts, and she escapes while surviving an attack from a dragon lurking in the gorge. I realized that I had to. The rest of the principal cast includes Ray Winstone, Nick Robinson, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Angela Bassett, and Robin Wright.

Damsel Cast

• Millie Bobby Brown as Elodie
• Ray Winstone as Lord Bayford, the lord of an unnamed northern land and Elodie’s father
• Angela Bassett as Lady Bayford, the wife of Lord Bayford and Elodie’s stepmother
• Brooke Carter as Floria, Elodie’s younger sister
• Nick Robinson as Prince Henry, the prince of Aurea
• Robin Wright as Queen Isabelle, the queen regnant of Aurea and Prince Henry’s mother
• Milo Twomey as King Roderick, the king consort of Aurea and Prince Henry’s father
• Nicole Joseph as Princess Victoria, one of the previous princesses sacrificed to the dragon
• Shohreh Aghdashloo as the voice of the Dragon, an unnamed dragon that demands sacrifices of Aurea’s princesses

Damsel Plot

The first king of Aurea launched a futile attack against the dragons living in his realm. All of the king’s men are killed, leaving the king at the mercy of the dragon. Centuries later, Lord Bayford’s adolescent daughter Elodie receives a proposal from Queen Isabella of Aurea to marry her son, Prince Henry. At the urging of her father, Elodie agrees to marry in order to help the poor. When Elodie and Henry arrive in Aurea, they both seem indifferent at first, but they begin to grow closer as they share a desire to travel. Elodie’s stepmother, Lady Bayford, does not become friends with Queen Isabel, and Queen Isabel begs Elodie to break off the engagement, but to no avail. After the wedding, Elodie and Henry participate in an ancient ceremony held in the mountains, ostensibly to celebrate their marriage. Isabelle describes the pact between the first king and the dragon, in which he had to sacrifice his three daughters for her peace. After a ritual of cutting and splicing her hands, Henry carries Elodie along a narrow path above the dragon’s nest and throws her into the abyss. Elodie recovers from her fall and realizes that she is the real victim. She runs away from a dragon that burned her leg and discovers a bright cave full of glowing snails, which she collects as a light source. Elodie arrives in a room with a note that says “This is a safe place she cannot reach”, the names of previous victims, and a map carved into the wall. While Elodie sleeps, the snail heals the burn on her leg. Elodie follows her map to a dead end on a steep mountainside. She discovered the body of a dead dragon cub, which became the reason for the royal sacrifice. A rescue team led by Lord Bayford arrives. The dragon kills her, but her distraction allows Elodie to escape from the mountain. She takes one of the rescue horses and hides under a rock, and while her pursuit of the dragon ends in failure, she burns down the area. This conflagration informs Isabel of the failure of Elodie’s sacrifice of hers, forcing her to kidnap Elodie’s sister Floria in her place. After Lady Bayford drives out and informs them, Elodie returns to the mountain to rescue Floria, who survived as her bait. Elodie prevents the dragon from reaching Floria. She tells her sister to hide and confronts the dragons, trying to convince them that they have been deceived by the Oreans. By bandaging the cut hand at the wedding, the blood of the bride and the Oreite king are mixed, and the dragon is forced to think. Princesses of the Aurean royal family. Refusing to believe her Elodie, the dragon claims her first king’s attack was unprovoked and attacks her, but Elodie tricks her into burning her. The dragon complies, so she heals them with a glowing snail. Elodie then interrupts another wedding at her palace and exposes Orlean’s betrayal. Elodie advises the new bride and her family to flee, and the dragon burns down the palace, along with the Aurean nobles and nobles inside. A few days later, Elodie, Floria, and Lady Bayford loaded up on supplies and headed home with the dragon in tow.