The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
Fairy tales have always had a cruel streak. Not the Disney kind, with the swelling strings and the guaranteed happy ending, but the older kind, the kind where girls slice off their own toes to fit a glass slipper and pigeons peck out the eyes of the wicked. The Ugly Stepsister goes looking for that version, and it finds it with a scalpel.
Emilie Blichfeldt's Norwegian debut retells Cinderella from the other side of the mirror. We follow Elvira, played by Lea Myren, the so-called ugly stepsister, as she sets about remaking herself into something the prince might finally want. It is a period fairy tale reimagined as body horror, and it mines the gap between the pretty story we all know and the Grimm-dark savagery lurking beneath it for absolutely everything it is worth.
Body horror is not usually my genre, I'll be upfront about that. The likes of Tetsuo tend to leave me cold rather than queasy, so it says something that this one got so far under my skin. The horror here is toe-curlingly hard to watch, and I do mean that quite literally. Yet it is superbly handled, never gratuitous (well, rarely), and always in service of the point. Blichfeldt earns every wince.
It sits in the same disquieting territory as The Substance, another film I rated highly, in which a woman submits to grotesque lengths in pursuit of the beauty the world insists she owes it. Both films understand that the real horror is not the gore on screen, but the reasons anyone would ever choose to go through with it. That is where the chill actually lives.
What makes The Ugly Stepsister so effective is its patience. It is a slow burn, tightening the screws with real control before the payoff lands, and the payoff does land. Along the way it is visceral and raw and, cleverest of all, sharp as a tack about the absurd, painful lengths people will go to in the name of beauty. This is social commentary of the best sort, the kind that makes its case through your gut rather than a speech. You do not sit there processing an argument. You squirm, and then you realise what you have been watching.
One very odd aside, which I cannot leave out: this is now the second Northern European film I have caught lately, after Lithuania's Toxic, to make grim use of a tapeworm. I had no idea they were having such a moment. I would love to know what is in the water up there, though perhaps, on reflection, I would not.
Blichfeldt announces herself here as a real talent. The debut is confident, controlled and gleefully nasty in all the right places. There is nothing accidental about its provocations, and nothing cheap about its imagery. Even the moments that made me watch through my fingers felt purposeful rather than gratuitous, which is a difficult line to walk and she walks it well. I will be watching whatever she does next with considerable interest, and probably considerable anxiety.
It will not be for everyone. The squeamish should approach with genuine caution, and I say that as someone who does not usually issue that kind of warning. But if you can stomach it, this is smart, striking, socially pointed horror at a high order. Four stars, and one of the more memorable modern horrors I have seen in quite a while.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2026-08-22
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Shudder · Shudder Amazon Channel
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
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