It’s tough times out there for a feminist body horror saga in a new one after “substance” filmmaking world. Coralie Fargeat’s gory parable of the abyss of self-loathing at the center of women’s societal pursuit of beauty raised the stakes in terms of the genre’s potential cultural reach. (Look at them terrifying Oscar nominationsfor one.)
But female genre directors have been reacting to impossible, often body-distorting beauty standards for decades. Enter Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt, who makes her macabre entrance into that movement with her playfully grotesque feature debut “The ugly stepsister.” One character is named Sophie von Kronenberg in this stylized Gothic retelling of the Brothers Grimm’s spin on Cinderella should provide enough sign for where film is on its way in all its nose-breaking, flesh-eating, tapeworm-infested glory.
“The Ugly Step-Sister” begins with two families’ tragically forced communion when the smooth, ring-haired Elvira (Lea Myren) arrives by carriage at a Victorian estate in Sweden. The grounds are a swirl of 18th-century gothic details, recognizable to Grimm heads who can already smell the inevitability of ghastly events locking into place, and hazy, dreamlike 70s arthouse vibes, thanks in part to the postmodern title cards and a soundtrack of harps and synths. In other words, here’s a classic story infused with something perhaps more empoweringly modern—even if, aside from female body horror, its storytelling techniques are largely traditional.
Elvira is the ugly duckling in her family, which includes the money-hungry widowed mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) and Elvira’s fairer sister Ama (Flo Fagerli). They have lost their patriarch and are in desperate need of funds which they hope to secure in the home of the noble lord Otto (Ralph Carlsson) and his stunningly beautiful daughter, Agnes (Thea-Sofie Loch Næss), now Elvira and Ama’s stepsister. Agnes is the kind of long-haired beauty you imagine on horseback in paintings or murky dream sequences of cocky, horny ’80s movies, but she has an agitated, restless edge that will define her more vividly as the film’s carriage ride to the careers of depravity. off the tracks of primer flavors of the installation.
A feminist body horror story is often a study in beauty contrasts, and immediately Elvira and Agnes are set up as classic nemeses as Elvira covets her stepsister’s elegance. In slapstick fashion, Otto suddenly dies at the dinner table, leaving the three women alone as a newly fractured family unit; in even more tragicomic terms, Otto and Agnes are revealed to be dead. Which leaves the family with no choice but to turn the daughters in for contention at the nearby king’s ball, where four full moons from now, the hot Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth) will choose a lucky virgin to be his princess.
Aside from a few key gender-swapping choices, Blichfeldt hews closely to the mold of the original Brothers Grimm tale in ways that, however inevitable, cannot escape predictability as Elvira undergoes transformations for the big ball. But the filmmaker laces a threadbare narrative with plenty of nasty body horror scenes that inject refreshing vim and power. The ant, working under a makeup team that includes Anne Chatrine Sauerberg and prosthetics artist Thomas Foldberg, is dumped in despondency from frame one – a, by society’s standards, too thick nose broken and sculpted with a hammer and jarring clinical removal of a quack Dr Esthetique (Adam Lundgren).
Another scene that must induce winces and covered eyes involves a barbaric eyelash transplant procedure, cinematographer Marcel Zyskind’s camera bringing us far too close to the cuts and their aftermath. Then there’s the co-principal of a posh finishing school who entrusts Elvira with a tape mask that promises to bring her down a few sizes and flush out the hidden beauty within. Of course, none of this goes well.
Blichfeldt credits the godfather for body horror David Cronenberg as influence — how could she not? — although “The Ugly Stepsister” is more body horror in its formalism than spiritual in its genre. The film lacks Cronenberg’s pathos and brooding philosophical inquiry, more interested in the surface of things without piercing them too deeply or leaving too gaping a wound. Sequences of Elvira starving herself and obsessing over her weight sank the score like a drill, although the script could do more to explore the subjectivity of the lead and how her self-absorbed pursuit of beauty becomes contagious to everyone around her. Even as a tapeworm eats her from the inside out, and when Elvira eventually, of course, succumbs to the worst possible method of getting her feet to fit into that pesky slipper.
The secret weapon character who makes the more ghostly impression is Agnes, whose chignon hides a rebellious spirit underneath – as well as a secret romance with the stable boy Isak (Malte Gårdinger). What’s going on in her head? Blichfeldt only gives us glimpses, but they are enough to enchant. All body contortions, projectile tapeworm vomiting and severed toes aside, the film’s creepiest sequence follows Elvira into the stables where she accidentally (?) spies Agnes, bent over, ass up and ready to receive Isak in the only way that won’t soil her chastity. The sound of horses braying and neighing only heightens the primal, animalistic vibes in a scene that boils down to Agnes being brutally admonished by her new stepmother, spurring Agnes’ own silent war against Elvira.
The slow set-up (even punctuated by insane violence) leads everyone to the requisite gala centerpiece, where the new and improved Elvira is revealed to her potential prince. Blichfeldt goes with the guts while skimping on the soul, even as “The Ugly Stepsister” offers a way out for its (and all of its society’s) tortured women. The tyranny of an impossible hierarchy of beauty will forever be the inspired stuff of great horror filmmaking. Although “The Ugly Stepsister” doesn’t go much deeper than Dr. Esthetique’s scalpel, the brazenly grotesque surface of the piece can only be deep enough.
Grade: B-
“The Ugly Stepsister” premiered in 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Shudder will release the film later in the year.
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