Millie Bobby Brown doth not suffer in silence as the tormented, burned and embattled heroine of “Damsel.”

A violent upending of women’s roles in fairytale fantasies, much of it is spent with her title character struggling to escape a dragon’s lair, screaming in pain and fear, grunting with effort and groaning in agony.

It’s a somewhat muddled action pic, a joyless slog through the first act, some intense and entertaining “work the problem” of getting away from a fire-breathing dragon who growls in the voice of the great Shohreh Agdashloo in the middle acts, and a preachy, speak-my-truth finale that tries to throw punches and pull them at the same time.

No biggy. The “Stranger Things/Enola Holmes” starlet was due for a misstep, and this isn’t an epic failure, just an ordinary, tin-eared and dull one.

She plays Elodie, daughter of a noble of the north (Ray Winstone), a hard-working young lady who tries to help provide for “our people” with her younger sister, Floria (Brooke Carter).

But Dad and stepmom (Angela Bassett) have a solution to their poverty and starvation woes. The rulers of another kingdom pick Elodie to marry their son, the prince (Nick Robinson), with a cash settlement as part of the deal.

It’s just that the minute we meet the blonde Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright), we smell a rat.

Sure, Prince Henry seems to meet at least one of reluctant princess-to-be-Elodie’s “I just hope he’s kind. And well read.” requirements.

But the opening scene of the movie saw a king foolishly lead his knights to slaughter in a dragon’s lair centuries before. There’s something about this kingdom and that dragon that smells of double-dealing and a a long term contract, written in blood.

That’s how Elodie winds up in the bowels of a mountain, struggling to reason out what just happened, what may happen and how to do what none of the women whose carved messages and bones were all they left behind there were able to do — escape.

The fiery effects are good, and pitlessly applied. This isn’t for little kids, as people, birds and other critters die.

The only quotable lines in the Dan Mazeau pedestrian script go to Agdashloo’s (“House of Sand and Fog”) dragon.

“Almost caught you, little bird,” she growls. “This story always ends the same.”

Will it? That might be predictable, but satisfying. What “Wrath of the Titans” writer Mazeau cooks up is a daisy chain of cop-outs. Can’t have an “evil” stepmother. The rough edges are rubbed off almost everyone.

Can’t have this or that character seem dead and stay dead. And let’s see things from the dragon’s point of view, for once.

Some of it plays, some of it doesn’t. Brown isn’t bad, although her character’s coming into her own is so preachy and self-empowering that it’s eye-rolling time.

Didn’t like it. Didn’t hate it. But as the Queen of Netflix, maybe hold out for something better next time while you’ve still got that power.

Rating: PG-13 (Action|Strong Creature Violence|Bloody Images)

Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Angela Bassett, Brooke Carter, Nick Robinson and Robin Wright, with the voice of Shohreh Agdashloo.

Credits: Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, scripted by Dan Mazeau. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:47