The Ugly Stepsister (Home Re-Release) | The Deight Night Review
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| The Ugly Stepsister (Emilie Blichfelt, Second Sight Films, 2025) |
In her feature debut, Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfelt takes a somewhat modern, cynical, body horror swing at - a story audiences worldwide will be familiar with thanks to the endless film adaptations (mostly by Disney) and, especially in the UK, the annual tradition of a pantomime performances - Cinderella. Blichfelt's take switches up the fairytale completely, making one of the infamous ugly stepsisters, Elvira (Lea Myren) the film's protagonist and casts Cinderella - or rather, Agnes - (Thea Sofie Loch Naess) as almost the film's villain. As the story goes, in a mythical Kingdom, Elvira's mother, Rebekka (Ane Dahl Trop) marries an old man for his wealth and in so doing brings his daughter, Agnes, into the family. After her new husband dies, Rebekka must find a new source of income and, by chance, it is announced that Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth) is inviting all the single women in the Kingdom to a ball where he will make one of them his wife. In an effort to make sure Elvira is the one he marries, and not her newly orphaned step-daughter, Rebekka goes to inhumane lengths to make sure she's no longer "ugly".
The Ugly Stepsister certainly lives up to the adjective in its title, not just because of the grotesque body horror that is mercifully sparse throughout the film's almost two hour runtime but because of the film's contemptuous message about female beauty. With the central narrative of the film being Elvira's journey of self-destruction to become a "better" version of herself and the overarching themes of female beauty standards, it's no question that The Ugly Stepsister is at least in part inspired by the other recent body horror film about modern beauty standards, The Substance. While both films are gruesome and cynical, The Ugly Stepsister's message is seemingly far more nasty and scornful. Instead of being a faded movie star that's clinging on to her success, Elvira is simply a lonely girl looking for love and she's simply too "ugly" for anyone to want her. She mutilates herself, is forced into transformational surgery that literally breaks her, and she starves herself to lose weight, and after all that, as anyone familiar with the story knows, Cinderella runs off with the Prince at the end. The message? If you're "ugly" on the outside, that's all you'll ever be to everyone and the beautiful people will always win at love over you.
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| The Ugly Stepsister (Emilie Blichfelt, Second Sight Films, 2025) |
One could argue that this is a subversion of the story of Cinderella, exposing the traditional story's very traditional views towards women. This does add up as the Prince in this story is depicted as being a pretentious and brainless hound dog who surrounds himself with similar party animals and Cinderella herself sees through this, only wishing to marry the prince for his money to save her own family. However, the subversion ends there, both Cinderella and Elvira are still victims of their joint mother, Rebekka, who remains the story's real gold digging villain, as per the fairy tale. The film didn't necessarily need to change Cinderella's ending, making the Prince go with Elvira, but had it fully committed to making Cinderella the villain and Rebekka a more sympathetic antagonist, the themes would have come through more. Instead, The Ugly Stepsister ends on a depressing and horrific conclusion that maintains the message of Nicolas Wynding Refn's The Neon Demon, "beauty isn't everything, it's the only thing".
While its body horror is certainly impressive, it contributes to the nasty atmosphere that reeks throughout The Ugly Stepsister which results in a frankly uncomfortable and unpleasant watch by all definitions. Its originality, creativity and stylistic choices can't be ignored but the volume of the film's messaging is much louder resulting in a less than enjoyable fairy tale romance.
★★1/2
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