The Ugly Stepsister: Film Review
The Norwegian body horror, The Ugly Stepsister, was not initially on my radar but the positive word-of-mouth and the 95% Rotten Tomatoes score caught my attention and I had to check it out. It’s definitely not for the faint-hearted!
Emilie Bilchfeldt‘s film is an unhinged horror twist on the classic fairy tale Cinderella. We know the story from Cinderella’s perspective very well, so it’s time to see it from her stepsister Elvira’s point of view. Elvira (Lea Myren) competes against her stunning stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess) for Prince Julian’s (Isac Calmroth) attention and hand in marriage and goes to extreme, brutal lengths to make herself more beautiful.
Much like The Substance, The Ugly Stepsister takes a sledgehammer to beauty standards and uses brutal body horror to drive home its message about the never-ending pursuit of physical perfection. For example, Elvira undergoes plastic surgery on her nose that is so primitive it’s basically barbaric. I watched many gory scenes through my fingers and found myself gagging at another disgusting sequence. This is graphic in both a horror and sexual sense so consider yourselves warned!
The film is quite a slow burn as it takes its time setting up the rivalry between Elvira and Agnes, the pressure on Elvira to marry somebody wealthy, and their time at finishing school in preparation for Prince Julian’s ball. That is where things really get going and Elvira gets more desperate and depraved. While I liked the story beforehand, the ball is where the film really levels up and becomes truly horrifying and gruesomely entertaining.
The Ugly Stepsister isn’t quite as perfect as the RT score would suggest but it’s a wickedly nasty feature about the price of beauty.
Available for digital download now