The Ugly Stepsister

The Norwegian body horror The Ugly Stepsister is a twisted take on Cinderella, following the turbulent (and rather pain-filled) life of dreamy adolescent Elvira (Lea Myren). Subjected to one beauty contraption after another by her iron-fisted mother, Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), Elvira is heavily insecure in the face of her Cinderella-like stepsister, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss).

A delightfully dark, slow-burning retelling of Cinderella that strips the story of its Disney-ness. The story of Cinderella has gone through numerous makeovers, with Charles Perrault’s French version inspiring mainstream versions like Disney’s staple princess story. But the German duo Grimm Brothers also put their gloomy spin on the legend with sadistic punishments for the evil stepsisters and some nasty bodily mutilation. Emilie Blichfeldt’s eyebrow-raising directorial debut, The Ugly Stepsister, sticks closely to the R-rated Grimm version of Cinderella. Blending lavish, period-accurate production design with absurdist humor from a Yorgos Lanthimos film (think Poor Things but bloodier), The Ugly Stepsister urges its audience to chuckle, wince, and ultimately question what they watched. Yes, we have the usual Cinderella narrative with the blonde-haired, conventionally beautiful Agnes being subjected to domestic exploitation by her evil stepmother. But this version ends up humanizing the stepsisters. Lea Myren is in top form as Elvira — the titular antiheroine — a girl who fantasizes about marrying the prince of the land, only for her looks to be judged by an uptight bourgeois society and tinkered with by medieval plastic surgeons. This is the era when noses are sculpted with a chisel, fake eyelids are sewn into eye bags, and the dieting fad involves swallowing a tapeworm that consumes your extra calories.

Have the stomach for The Ugly Stepsister’s stomach-churning, worm-infested body horror. It’s clear that The Ugly Stepsister is far from a fairy tale. Instead, it’s a coming-of-age story from the mold of Stephen King’s Carrie, only set in a more merciless world. But with all its uncomfortably zoomed-in bodily violence and its gratuitous full-frontal nudity, The Ugly Stepsister tends to overdo its party tricks by the end. While the darkly funny yet atmospherically intense horror doesn’t exist for mere shock value, the Norwegian drama runs out of steam in between. Still, if you have the patience, you will be rewarded with a blood-oozing third act that’s tough to forget, for better or for worse. In the end, The Ugly Stepsister is a memorable, if uneven, satire on female beauty standards and a bold subversion of fairy tale romances. And on the way, there are enough cuts, slashes, and deep wounds to fill up a blood blank. Now, if only the film went through some chopping in the editing room.