Lea Myren in The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Written and Directed by Emilie Blichfeldt
(Norway)
If we are honest with ourselves, most of us would identify more with the imperfect Elvira than the flawless Cinderella. Emilie Blichfeldt has produced a master class in deconstructing a modern myth. Beauty may only be skin deep, but its impact on one’s self-worth can be devastating. The Ugly Stepsister is a boundary-pushing movie that is guaranteed to make you uneasy or even queasy and will leave an emotional mark on you.
The Ugly Stepsister is GGGG. Glorious. Grotesque. Gorgeous. Grimm. Walt Disney sanitized the Cinderella story with adorable talking mice, a benevolent fairy godmother, and a sweet and pure heroine. The Grimm’s fairy tale contains a more gruesome tale, and Blichfeldt took that as her mission by making a body-horror masterpiece out of a beloved children’s story. This movie does not carry an MPAA rating, but it probably would not make the cut as an R-rated movie. The gore and explicit sex in this movie make it a definite no-no for young audiences. Full stop. This is NC-17 material.
And yet, it is wonderful. Elvira is not a bad person, callous, or mean in how the Disney movie portrays her. She’s ungainly, to be sure. Anyone who has had to wear braces knows how self-conscious that makes you. Her hair style screams, “I’m a little girl.” And she may be carrying more weight than her BMI would recommend, but she’s not an ogre. She’s just a bit plain. And when your mother’s aspirations require you to land that Prince, plain won’t do. (Particularly when the Prince is as shallow 19th-century bro.) So drastic and gruesome measures are called for.
You probably know the main players, but here is how the Ugly Stepsister presents the familiar tale:
The Cast of The Ugly Stepsister
- Lea Myren plays Elvira, a shy and awkward teenage girl driven to marry a handsome young prince. Unfortunately for her, the competition for that potential prize is her prenaturally nearly perfect stepsister, Agnes.
- Thea Sofie Loch Næss plays Agnes, a beautiful young woman and the daughter of a manor lord who is now in a joined family when her father marries a wealthy woman to prop up their fortunes. You might know her as the title that she will eventually assume: Cinderella.
- Ane Dahl Torp is Rebecca, Elvira’s mother. Rebecca still retains her beauty and believes she has found a stable home for herself and her two daughters by marrying a wealthy landowner. However, the manor is a failing facade, as she unknowingly married a bankrupt man.
- Isaac Calmroth plays Prince Julian. The prince is almost everything that a 19th Century young woman desired. He’s handsome, adventurous, wealthy, and a renowned published poet. He is not, however, charming in the least. Kindness is not in his apparent portfolio.
- Flo Fagerli portrays Alma, Elvira’s little sister. Alma is quiet and observant. She cares for Elvira and has been spared her mother’s expectations, which are the burdens that Elvira must carry. Eventually, Alma becomes the stable hand who cares for the family’s horses.
- Adam Lundgren plays Dr. Esthetique, a cosmetic surgeon who offers a wide range of 19th century body “improvements” straight out of the latest trendy catalogues. He seems to enjoy his gruesome work a bit too much.
- Katarzyna Herman is Madam Vanja, the headmistress of the finishing school where Elvira and Agnes are enrolled. Madame Vanja is a strict taskmaster who greatly disdains Elvira, whom she believes is a lost cause.
A Short Synopsis of The Ugly Stepsister
Rebecca and her two daughters, Elvira and Alma, arrive at the manor house of Otto, who lives in the vast estate with his daughter Agnes and a few servants. Otto and Rebecca have an arranged marriage that should be financially beneficial to both. Agnes and Elvira have a chilly initial relationship, as Agnes comes from old money, and her privileged status over the years has made her arrogant. This all comes crashing down when, having humiliated Elvira by throwing cake at her, Otto has a violent heart attack and dies during supper. It turns out that he needed Rebecca more than she needed him, and there isn’t any money flowing into the family coffers.
Agnes dutifully and resentfully tends to the wake of her decaying father, but the rest of the family tries to figure out how to move forward. A lifeline arrives in the form of an announcement. Prince Julian is going to have a ball gala to select a bride. The kingdom’s young women know that the best way to gain the prince’s favor would be to be one of the lead performers in the ball dance ceremony, and for that, finishing school is required. It also would be helpful if the contestants were beautiful. Rebecca knows this, as does Elvira, and Agnes. Game. On.
Rebecca enlists Dr. Esthetqiue and his practices in the very latest catalogues of facial reconstruction to help re-build Elvira. The surgery in this era, and in this kingdom, resembles cabinetmaking more than it does modern surgery, so Dr. Esthetique goes to town with a chisel to Elvira’s nose and a hook to her eyelids to give her just the right look. Of course, in the interem, Elvira resembles Dr. Doom more than a ballet dancer, and her impressionable dance instructor, Madame Vanja, plays favorites. She likes Agnes, a traditionally graceful and lovely dancer, much more than the try-hard but slightly awkward Elvira. The prospects look grim for Elvira.
She catches a lucky break, however, when she spies and snitches on Agnes having sex with the stablehand in the barn. Rebecca flies into a rage and uses her power as the now-reigning head of the household to demote Agnes to becoming a servant, where she earns the new moniker of Cinderella. Elvira seizes on this gap in the social structure and swallows a tapeworm egg to control her weight. (Some methods never get old!) As the months go by, Elvira heals from her surgery, her braces come off, and the tape worm does its thing as the ball date approaches.
Elvira now boasts an attractive figure and visage, backed by her mother’s money. Madame Vanja sees past the superficial and now sees Elvira’s dancing skills (which had been pretty good all along…) and promotes her to the lead dancer. She’s got a chance! But there is a moral to this story. Though she’s not cheating, her shortcuts to achieve victory will pay some gruesome currency. You know how things turn out for Cinderella. But what about Elvira? Get your barf bag ready.
Is this a Horror Movie?
This is a stellar achievement. It may not be for you though. It contains some shockingly graphic sex, and at least four scenes that might make you cover yourself with the veil of cowardice. (Peeking through your fingers at the screen because it is so hard to watch.) Ther is an apocryphal story of a woman in one of the other screenings at Overlook throwing up during the movie because she couldn’t handle it. Usually that sort of reaction is reserved for films like Terrifier 3.
With that out of the way, it should be noted that this is 80% fairy tale drama and 20% horror. But when the horror comes, it comes HARD. If Audition is considered a horror movie (and nobody I know would dispute that), then The Ugly Stepsister is also a horror movie. Full stop. In the trailer, SLANT sums it up nicely. This is Cinderealla Meets Croneneberg. To which I say, this is better body horror than any Cronenberg movie dating back to Dead Ringers.
In an era where expiring IPs allow for the exploitation and abuse of beloved childhood characters like Winnie the Pooh and Popeye, it’s nice to see a horror re-envisioning effort as skillfully executed as The Ugly Stepsister.
Evaluating the Characters and Performances:
However, the explicitly shocking material isn’t what makes this movie great. It is the deft hand with which Blichfield, Myren, and Loch Næss handle Elvira and Cinderella. Though they flipped the table, making Elvira the protagonist you are nominally rooting for, they did not give her Cinderella’s traits. Myren makes Elvira initially pathetic through her body language and physical countenance. We all know how to make ourselves look goofy. Pull your chin in. Wince. Slacken your jaw. Slump your shoulders. Push your belly out. Wear your hair in tight pigtails. Myren is an attractive actress who transformed into a less attactive version of herself. She is pathetic, in that she draws our sympathy, but for many of us we see ourselves in her.
Similarly, Agnes was not turned into a hateful antagonist. She is a young woman born of privilege and gifted with natural beauty. She is resentful of the way Rebecca has abandoned the legacy of her moldering father, but she isn’t a bitch, which would have been an easy charicature. These are adjustments in degrees. There is much more ambiguity in these versions of the characters.
Evaluating the Production Design:
Let us not forget that I stated that this movie is gorgeous. The set designs and costumes are top-notch. It is a period piece drama that does everything practically. There is no digital volume for exotic locations, no period-inappropriate costumes, and all the gore gags are practical. It has a tactile authenticity. The movie feels big and expansive, saturated with natural daylight or candlelight as needed.
In her Overlook Q&A, Blichfeldt described that her home country, Norway, has no castles or big medieval estates. The production was moved to Poland, which has an abundance of wonderful old buildings that could serve as a proper fairy tale setting. The aging manor bore the weight of decades of neglect, and the Royal castle ballroom was suitably ornate with baroque splendor.
Blichfeldt’s costume designer, Manon Rasmussen, is a long-time collaborator of Lars Von Trier. Rasmussen blended a mix of early Victorian (1850s) styles with the gaudier late Victorian (1880s) looks. In a nod to subtlety, the belief was that Cinderella came from old money, and she preferred the more elegant, toned-down look of the early Victorian era, while Rebecca and Elvira favored the frillier and more heavily festooned later fashion. I am dying to know what YouTube historical costume analyst Bernadette Banner thinks about these costumes.
The gore gags are straight out of the FANGORIA playbook. The movie uses gore sparingly but to enormous effect. A little goes a helluva long way in this movie. It also leads to audible groans from the audience. Yeeeeaahhh! Also prominent are a couple of… erections. Prosthetics or ready for PornHub worthy casting calls? Literally. The Prince’s invitation required virgins. In the end, it didn’t matter THAT much.
A last wonderful practical effects side-note. Cinderella’s dress wasn’t custom-made by a fairy godmother and bluebirds like the Disney animated feature. Instead, she was woven a magically made dress by silkworms that crawled off the decomposing husk of her father. According to Blichfeldt, the worms were real. Very cool.
Concluding Thoughts for The Ugly Stepsister
I fell in love with this movie. It has emotional depth, brilliant performances, visual splendor, and powerful horror moments, and it has invested me for the entirety of the run time. This was clearly a passion project for Blichfeldt, a remarkable achievement made even more stunning by the fact that this was her feature film debut. If you have made it this far through the review, you will understand that this movie is not for the faint of heart, but the extreme moments are spaced out to allow you to catch your breath. The Ugly Stepsister was the talk of the festival, and I was part of a chorus celebrating the merits of this movie.
The Ugly Stepsister is Unrated by the MPAA. You have already been warned that this would likely receive an NC-17 rating. It releases theatrically on April 17, in theaters willing to run Unrated content. (Likely not your Cineplexes). The movie deserves to be seen on a big screen, with a big audience that will react to not just the gross stuff, but also the personal and emotional content of the story. The Ugly Stepsister is filmed in Norwegian, with English Subtitles.
This movie will almost certainly be among my top films of 2025 by the end of the year. It was the best film for me among a fairly stacked group of movies at this year’s Overlook Film Festival. Shudder purchased the distribution rights, so if your local cinemas are unwilling to play this, you will see it streaming soon.