If the disheartening lack of creativity in Disney’s live-action remakes leaves one thinking these timeless stories have, in fact, run their course, leave it to Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt to find new life (and blood) with the Cinderella tale. Her impressively mounted, darkly macabre first feature follows Elvira (Lea Myren, in a fantastic feature-debut performance) living in the shadow of her stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess) as they vie for the attention of the Prince (Isac Calmroth). A twisted body horror take on the classic tale for how it explores the costs of beauty, The Ugly Stepsister is not afraid to dive into the unflinchingly gruesome while packing an impressive sense of empathy.
Drawing from the Brothers Grimm incarnation (a darker approach complete with self-mutilation) Blichfeldt sets her debut apart from the recent cash-grab horror adaptations of Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh in both craft and pathos. Desperate for the Prince’s affection as glimpsed in fever dreams, Elvira will go to any length to bend and break her body to achieve a certain standard of beauty, all under the encouragement of her domineering, newly widowed mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp). Early scenes of zit-popping and nose-corrective “surgery” set the stage for bodily torment involving eyes, toes, and stomach all in the name of seeking true happiness through a man’s approval. Even the lesser Cronenberg-ian body horror elements––e.g. a spaghetti-slurping scene––provide an uneasiness not seen since the likes of Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard. Such pursuit of the grotesque is certainly not new territory, as seen in the exhausting lengths gone with the Oscar-nominated The Substance. But where Coralie Fargeat threw everything at the wall until it crumbled under the weight of any heavy-handed metaphor available, Blichfeldt shows a knack for structure and tension-building. The ballroom finale and search for the slipper’s true owner is a stomach-churning, visceral spectacle for the last gasps for an embrace that will never come.
By flipping the story’s central perspective from Cinderella to a stepsister, Blichfeldt is asking the audience to place their sympathy in a character more or less villainized for centuries. She found the perfect conduit with Myren, who effectively conjures both the short-lived ebullience and utter misery of striving for perfect beauty, all in order to potentially please a man who’s no more than a symbol to her. While there’s no fairy godmother, per se, the next closest is a sexist, misogynistic pig that provides a dress for Elvira. On the surface, these tweaks could be seen as a revisionist, feminist-forward vision of a tale as old as time, but peeling under its lushly-twisted surface, The Ugly Stepsister’s downcast message is more about the suffocatingly limited potential for female independence across almost all characters of classic fairytales. The very stories we repeat ad nauseam across generations to entertain and even inspire children from a young age.
Somewhat evoking Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, courtesy of Vilde Tuv and Kaada’s anachronistic score and elegant cinematography from Marcel Zyskind (who captures both the Polish castle and the costumes from Lars von Trier’s regular designer Manon Rasmussen in all their glory), The Ugly Stepsister eschews a certain staidness that can afflict period dramas. While Blichfeldt might revel in the gruesomeness to a touch too much, this is a well-crafted debut––commendable in the unexpected, gnarled ways it finds sympathy with the downcast and dismissed.
The Ugly Stepsister premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and will be released by IFC Films/Shudder.