THE UGLY STEPSISTER (Den Stygge Stesøsteren) is a 2025 movie from Norway, available on Shudder. If I’d seen it somewhere else I don’t know if I’d think of it as a horror movie exactly – more like a dark period drama with some magic, some blood, and some puke. But I’ve seen people call it “body horror,” and it’s the rare movie I’ve seen described that way that isn’t very Cronenbergian, so I support that. I read in Fangoria that the director calls it “beauty horror.” It has also been compared quite a bit to THE SUBSTANCE, and that’s nice because the similarities are all thematic. Otherwise they’re very different movies.

Confession: it took me embarrassingly long to put together that this is literally a retelling of Cinderella and not just making an allusion to it with that title. Let me say this: this ain’t your grandpa’s Cinderella! But it’s cool that your grandpa has his own version of Cinderella that he likes, I respect that.

The story centers on Elvira (Lea Myren), oldest daughter of Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp, DEAD SNOW), who is about to remarry to older widower Otto (Ralph Carlsson), but during the wedding celebration he suddenly drops dead. While trying to comfort Otto’s daughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss, THE LAST KING), Elvira learns that both partners thought the other was rich and were trying to marry for the money. Since younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) hasn’t had her period yet it now falls upon Elvira to save the family by marrying a prince.

Myren is really great as Elvira, a character who reminds me a little bit of Pearl (from the movie PEARL) because she’s a total mess and a deluded goofball and I find something about that kind of relatable and/or sympathetic. I guess part of it is that it’s clear some of her issues come from the pressure her mom puts on her. She’s enrolled in a finishing school where she gets the last-kid-picked-for-the-team treatment for a while, though she’s not actually “ugly,” just kind of awkward and bug-eyed. But her mom makes her undergo a horrendous plastic surgery where a guy breaks her nose with tools and she has to wear a scary (but, honestly, cool) metal noseguard as it heals. She’s got that monstrosity screwed on (and tied with pretty ribbons) for a big chunk of the movie, so it’s such a relief when it finally comes off, and she’s happy with her new look. Then I thought she was just getting a quick followup appointment with the doctor to make sure it’s all good, but he begins the next horrifying procedure. She also has to swallow a tapeworm that grows so big she can see bulges on her belly as it moves around in there.

Agnes is nice to Elvira at first, though she snaps at her a few times after Rebekka says they can’t afford to bury her dad and just leaves him in a room to rot. Sometimes she goes in there and communes with the maggots. I think it was a good story choice to make her mostly nice – this is about what if the ugly stepsister deserves some sympathy?, not what if Cinderella is the villain?. I often root for Elvira but I cannot support her narcing Agnes out for fucking the stable boy Isak (Malte Gårdinger, TRIANGLE OF SADNESS). Rebekka thinks that’s low class and punishes her by making her the family’s servant. But I still didn’t figure out she was Cinderella until Elvira called her that. Sorry.

This reminded me a little bit of MARIE ANTOINETTE in its use of cool synthy music, and of THE VOURDALAK in its overcast look and mix of period-piece authenticity with magical elements. Agnes’ good fairy seems like a hallucination of her dead mother, but I guess not because somehow some magic silk worms repair her torn ball gown, she gets shoes and a carriage from somewhere. There’s also some interesting stylization that I can only think to describe as shooting the lurid parts as if for a food magazine. I love how director Emilie Blichfeldt and cinematographer Marcel Zyskind make gorgeous imagery of a rotting feast in the opening titles, then bring back that look for special occasions like the closeup of Elvira’s bloody toe stumps…

…or the sex scene in the stable. Curious Elvira sees the encounter as a series of delicately lit insert shots: Agnes presenting her ass, Isak’s shiny hard-on, the gluey aftermath glistening as it drips. (If that description seems like too much, the scene will too.)

I guess some of the gruesomeness here is going back to the pre-Bowdlerized version of the Cinderella story, and some of it is I’m sure just doing a dark take on a fairy tale, an idea we’re all familiar with. But honestly I don’t think I’ve seen it done quite like this, where the handsome prince and almost all the men are just shitty misogynistic pricks. She has a crush on the prince from afar because of a poetry book he published, then one day she spies on his naked ass while he’s pissing in the woods, and he sees her and tells his giggling homeboys, “I don’t want to fuck that,” but she continues to have gauzy romantic daydreams about him. It’s “dark” in a way that’s almost too real.

When the story is told from this point-of-view there’s kind of a CARRIE parallel. It builds to the ball where Elvira’s dreams seem to be coming true until Agnes comes in (wearing a veil) and the prince immediately switches who he’s interested in. The climax involves Elvira’s increasingly unhinged attempts to win him back. The lady is out of her mind, but I felt for her when she’d managed to steal Agnes’ slipper matching the one the prince found but she’s just sitting on the floor crying with the thing dangling off her much-too-big foot.

Then she decides to (SPOILER) chop off her toes to make the slipper fit, which come to think of it I remember from the Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes version, but because they’ve set up a semblance of reality here it plays very differently. The desperation and delusion are heartbreaking. Why would she think this could work, and would be worth doing?

There is some hope to the story to make it bearable. Younger sister Alma, absent the expectations of their mother, is able to witness all this madness with a clear head, and wants to help Elvira. That Alma’s a good kid. I don’t know if she comes from a real fairy tale – she ends up looking like Merda from BRAVE by the end. Maybe she’s a cheat. But I appreciate her.

This is a promising feature debut for writer/director Blichfeldt – it’s about something but not at the expense of being fun, it has its own style and personality, it’s not easy to categorize, it works better in action than it might sound on paper, it has a couple imaginatively gross parts. I bet she’ll have other interesting stories to tell in the future.