Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
A beautiful, strong-willed young royal refuses to wed the cruel sociopath to whom she is betrothed and is kidnapped and locked in a remote tower of her father’s castle. With her scorned, vindictive suitor intent on taking her father’s throne, the princess must protect her family and save the kingdom.
The Princess is a lean, no-frills action vehicle that leans hard into its central gimmick: a princess who fights her way down a tower in a succession of increasingly bloody brawls. The plot is skeletal and deliberately so, functioning mainly as connective tissue between action set pieces rather than a fully realized narrative. Acting is serviceable at best — Joey King carries the physicality convincingly but the dialogue and characterization give little to work with, and the villains are cartoonishly underwritten. Cinematography is competent with some well-staged close-quarters combat, though the handheld style can obscure the choreography. Novelty earns a modest boost for its commitment to the fantasy-action hybrid and its unapologetically pulpy, video-game-esque structure — it occupies a specific niche with some conviction. The ending wraps up predictably with no real emotional or narrative payoff beyond the final fight, which itself feels anticlimactic.