Director: Emilie Blichfeldt
Writer: Emilie Blichfeldt
Stars: Lea Myren, Thea Sofie Loch Næss, Ane Dahl Torp
Synopsis: Follows Elvira as she battles against her gorgeous stepsister in a realm where beauty reigns supreme. She resorts to extreme measures to captivate the prince, amidst a ruthless competition for physical perfection.
Cinderella’s story is a tale as old as time, retold a million times, decade by decade, in various forms and genres. Of course, the one that first comes to mind is the classic 1950 animated Disney film we all saw as kids. But this story has been changed and remodeled to the point where there are new meanings. For example, Jaques Demy did his rendition back in 1970 with Donkey Skin (Peau d’ane), utilizing his vivid, swift cinematic movements and mixing them with a sinister undertone in the colorful fantasy world to create a touching film about disguise, femininity, and hedonism. Most recently, in a further stretch, there’s Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning Anora, a modern-day Cinderella story about a Brooklyn sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, which later becomes an exploration of the faux American dream, female agency, and loneliness.
These are some of the ways in which the classic tale has been retold. However, I don’t think we have seen a version like Norwegian director Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt’s feature-length debut, The Ugly Stepsister (Den stygge stesøsteren, screening in the Panorama section of the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival), where blood is spilled, and the macabre is dwelled in. If you have scoured through the straight-to-streaming weekend releases list, you may have seen some trashy horror versions of Cinderella. But Blichfeldt’s, although it has its own sense of trashiness and gore attached, has some meat on its bones, to the same degree it has bodily transformations and splatter–utilizing body horror as the catalyst for its scares and messaging.
The Ugly Stepsister follows Elvira (Lea Mathilde Skar-Myren), a lonely girl living in the shadows of her own home, as her stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) gets all of the attention, including that of her mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp). The two have different world views, induced by their respective forms of isolation. Elvira is sidelined by everyone around her, while Agnes tries to make everything perfect to comply with the standards put upon her by her mother and society. Most importantly, Agnes wants to ensure she is the prettiest girl at the ball for the “prince charming” of this fantasy world, Prins Julian (Isac Calmroth). There’s a reason why “prince charming” is in quotes. One of the changes that Blichfeldt makes to the classic tale is making the desired prince a complete and insufferable scumbag.
Prins Julian is the complete opposite of what a prince is supposed to be or behave like. Calmroth does everything he can to make the audience loathe him entirely. And he succeeds easily. Everyone wants the attention of Prince Julian, even the saddened Elvira, who has fever dreams about him. Elvira will go to lengths that Agnes wouldn’t, although, if tested, there is a chance. However, what Elivra decides to do, with the encouragement of her stepmother, who wants perfection nonetheless, is brutal and bloody. She breaks her body and picks it apart for the sake of beauty and allure–the sheer magnetism that her stepmother views as the most essential facet a woman should have.
From pimple-popping to nose jobs and eye corrections, Elvira undergoes many surgical cosmetic procedures handled by Dr. Esthetique (Adam Lundgren), whose methods are more brutal and cruel than any other doctor. But what can you expect from a mad doctor with that name? For some reason, he reminded me of Dr. Satan from Rob Zombie’s entertaining shlock-and-sleaze fest House of a Thousand Corpses, where the character is precisely what the name entails–a satanic doctor willing to do the most malevolent acts–and adding to the film what it needs tonally and scares-wise, embracing the trashiness as well as the camp. From the name Dr. Esthetique alone, you notice that Blichfeldt is not treating The Ugly Stepsister with subtlety or poise. Instead, her approach is similar, in more ways than one, to Coralie Fargeat’s in The Substance.
The two directors, Blichfeldt and Fargeat, use a sledgehammer approach to their film’s messaging and body horror, where everything is in your face at all times. What they want to say with their genre works is more than evident from the get-go, and the two repeat their points on multiple occasions, which might bother many viewers who seek something more analytical or complex. In the case of The Ugly Stepsister, there is an excessive recirculation of the thematic thread and some of the narrative beats seen in previous Cinderella incarnations. However, Blichfeldt’s tonal control and utilization of genre convictions are so effective that you go along with the ride and its full unmasked commentary on aging, beauty standards, identity, and female independence. This is all accomplished through horrifyingly beautiful body horror constructions that will make the weak stomached queasy and cause their spines to tingle.
I don’t want to spoil any of the concoctions Blichfeldt and her team makes so that you see them yourself. They do not reinvent the wheel in the least. But these moments are so gripping because they are utilized in the story–and how they tie to the themes–and the tangibility they contain, making it feel real and pain-inducing. Blichfeldt is not afraid to let the camera linger on the harsh surgeries and beauty methods that Elvira endures. The images are heightened by Lea Mathilde Skar-Myren’s dual-toned role, performing a balancing act between delicateness and ferocity in her debut role. She gives way to the pain, and you feel how these methods are taking a toll on her heavily. This creates some much-needed empathy in a film that is very much reliant on the gnarly.
It is a key facet that permits the audience to connect with the story amidst its trashiness and lack of subtlety. Skar-Myren is tasked with a lot; this is a physical and demanding role, especially for a screen debut. So, it is very impressive that the young actress managed to work through all those demands and give The Ugly Stepsister some heart. Blichfeldt’s take on Cinderella delivers much shock and awe with its body horror elements and bloody finale when the clock strikes twelve. In the battle of excess and crudeness, there is plenty of entertainment to be had with this picture. A classic tale is turned upside down. Blichfedt ups the ante while maintaining the same dosage of empathy in the story. Always welcoming of genre pictures, the Berlin International Film Festival has opened its arms to The Ugly Stepsister. Will audiences do the same as well when the time comes?
