Parents' Guide to Damsel

From Stranger Things to Enola Holmes, Millie Bobby Brown is cornering the market on roles for young women with superhuman strength, intellect, and resolve, and she proves her mettle here once again. Damsel takes pains to make its feminist message clear, and Brown manages a sensitive performance within a highly physical role as the damsel in distress who can rely only on herself to be saved. She's also surrounded by reliable veterans (Wright, Bassett, and Winstone). Gathering so much talent together for what could make a new franchise at Netflix might not have been an easy task for Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later), but it pays off.

Fresnadillo and team also do a solid job creating suspense out of just a few (well-designed) settings. They've edited together multiple camera angles on many sequences and kept the camera close on Brown in the caves, keeping the pace brisk and the emotional stakes high. Production design, wardrobe, and effects are all worthy, and the score, produced by Hans Zimmer, is appropriately eerie. The labyrinthine cave is a little confusing for the viewer, even with the maps Elodie finds, and her levels of fighting and progression, complete with discovery and use of tools along the way, carry more than a hint of a video game structure. That may ultimately reveal this film's target audience, though the veteran supporting cast could draw older viewers too.