The Ugly Stepsister Review: A Grim(m) Fairy Tale
Streaming Movie Review - Shudder/VOD - Horror
Disney has adapted a number of fairy tales and made them safe for children, but most of the original stories were quite bleak. Norwegian writer and director Emilie Blichfeldt built her debut feature film, The Ugly Stepsister, from the Grimm version of Cinderella, incorporating some of the more terrifying aspects of the story and weaving them into a body horror narrative that offers an insightful examination of the ways women are expected to conform to societal expectations of beauty. This film will be released on VOD and Shudder on May 9.
We meet Elvira (Lea Myren), poring over the poetry of Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth), dreaming of the day when they could be wed. Elvira, her sister Alma (Flo Fagerli), and their mother, Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), are traveling for Rebekka’s marriage to Otto (Ralph Carlsson), where they will meet their new stepsister, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss). The family seems to have a happy meeting, but shortly after the wedding, Otto dies, leaving the women to fend for themselves.
The women are trying to find a way to survive, when the Prince announces a ball where he will choose a bride. Elvira intends to go, but Rebekka has told her that she will need to work to transform from an ugly young woman into a princess. She hires Dr. Esthétique (Adam Lundgren) to perform various procedures to make Elvira as beautiful as Agnes, allowing her to attend the ball.
The body horror that exists in The Ugly Stepsister will no doubt be compared to that in last year’s The Substance, and there are similarities, but Blichfeldt’s work touches not just on how women are perceived by men and society, but how being told you’re ugly can impact how you see yourself. Elvira might not be an obvious beauty, but she is far from ugly. What is ugly is watching her nose being broken, watching eyelashes being sewn onto her eyes, and watching her swallow a tapeworm to control her weight.
Myren is fantastic in her role. Her screams while undergoing the various procedures are blood-curdling, and her need to be seen as desirable and pleasing not just to the prince, but to her mother is heartbreaking. Even though this movie is not in English, she conveys the agony of her situation across the language barrier.
One of the other aspects of The Ugly Stepsister that is really wonderful is the costume and production design. The film has a distinctly fairy-tale look, which contrasts brilliantly with the brutality of the body modifications. The juxtaposition of the dreamy pastels against the utter cruelty of the surgeries drives home the themes even more starkly.
Stories about the way society views women’s bodies aren’t new, and this won’t be the last of them. What makes The Ugly Stepsister unique is that it uses a familiar story and flips it on its head to show that pitting women against each other just hurts women. And in the worst case, may result in a tapeworm.
Rating: 4/5
This review originally appeared in The Dominion Post on May 3, 2025.