Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown is unlike you’ve ever seen her before in new Netflix fantasy, says director

Millie Bobby Brown trades the Upside Down for a dark fantasy fairytale in the new Netflix movie Damsel, and according to the director, her performance is different from anything she’s done before.

Speaking to GamesRadar+ and the Inside Total Film podcast, director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who’s best known for his work on 28 Weeks Later, shares that they worked hard to make the role different from those Brown has tackled before. 

"The idea that she is a young, beautiful woman who turns into a fighter, we needed to share that in a different way," he says. "I thought that the best way to do that is showing the intensity of the transformation. That's why there is a big section in the movie, which is the survival through the caves, that you see little by little how she's getting rid of layers from her past. You're seeing how she's literally physically changing in this, she cuts her hair, she's sweating, she's bleeding, and I think that is something that is really important for the story."

Brown plays Elodie in the dark twist on the fairytale genre, a young woman whose life is changed when she’s betrothed to a handsome prince. However, it’s not quite in the way she imagined after realizing that she’s actually been chosen as a sacrifice for an ancient debt. Thrown in a cave with a bloodthirsty dragon, she must try and survive against horrendous odds.

Fresnadillo adds that Brown was the "perfect" actor to tell this story, explaining that her performance is a mix of everything she’s done before, from playing Eleven in Stranger Things to her work in Enola Holmes. "The amazing thing that I have been seeing with her as she's growing up [and] in her career is the fact that she's becoming a real profound actress, and I noticed those values in the last works that she did," he continues. 

"This story is about the transformation of a young woman into a real independent woman, a fighter who is going to fight for herself, for her life. And Millie in the last year has been dropping those kinds of things in the works that she's done, and I think it was time now to gather all those things that she's been doing and put it into one single movie."

Damsel arrives on Netflix on March 8. You can listen to our full conversation with Fresnadillo on the Inside Total Film podcast, out later this week.

If you're looking for what else to watch, we've also got a list of the best Netflix movies and the best fantasy movies of all time.