It’s getting toward the end of the year, and with a view to doing another “best horror of 2025” list like the one I did in 2024, I’ve been watching some new films that I’ve seen recommended here and there in the horror community. And that’s how I came upon the Norwegian film The Ugly Stepsister (aka Den Stygge Stesøsteren), which is currently streaming on Shudder.
The directorial debut of filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt, The Ugly Stepsister is essentially a body horror/vaguely black comedy take on the Cinderella story, or more specifically, the Brothers Grimm version known as Aschenputtel, but it’s told through the POV of one of Cinderella’s stepsisters. It’s a bold and tremendously entertaining movie, with sumptuous visuals, a sympathetic but also sort of deranged lead character, and some gnarly gore and occasional gross-out scenes (especially if you’re squeamish about tapeworms, which figure quite prominently in the plot).
Set in some unspecified fairy-tale time in what looks like the 1800s, main protagonist Elvira (Lea Myren) moves with her sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) and their widowed, imperious mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) to the home of an older man named Otto (Ralph Carlsson) that Rebekka is marrying. It’s later discovered that both Rebekka and Otto were under the mistaken impression that the other had money and thought they were setting themselves up financially.
Anyway, Otto has a beautiful blonde daughter named Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), while Elvira and Alma are a bit more on the homely side. Elvira in particular is slightly chubby and has braces on her teeth, while the younger Alma is pretty enough, but a tad tomboyish. Elvira is also obsessed with the region’s Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth), constantly reading his book of poems and vowing that she’ll marry him one day.
The very night of Rebekka and Otto’s wedding, Otto keels over dead of a heart attack and falls face-first right into the cake. His daughter Agnes is inconsolable, and not long after his death, it’s discovered that Otto was more or less broke. Rebekka is beside herself, and laments that both of her daughters are probably too ugly to catch the attention of any wealthy, eligible men. Mom, as you can likely tell, is a bit of a venal, grasping harpy.
In fact, Rebekka decides to use what remaining money she has (as well as some sexual favors, it’s later implied) to get Elvira up to snuff so she’ll be able to snag a husband and change the family’s fortunes. Much to Agnes’s chagrin, Rebekka won’t even pay to bury Otto, and the guy just slowly rots in a back room over the course of the film.
Fortuitously, just as in the original Cinderella story, Prince Julian announces a ball a few months hence, to which all of the virginal young women of the region are invited so that Julian may choose a wife. Alma is too young, but both Elvira and Agnes get invitations, and because Agnes is obviously so much more beautiful and poised than Elvira, Rebekka puts all of her efforts into improving Elvira’s chances with the prince.
First, Rebekka takes her daughter to Dr. Esthétique (Adam Lundgren) to have her braces pulled off and to have her nose fixed (by breaking it in several places with a hammer and chisel, then keeping it in place with a metal cup that’s strapped to the poor girl’s head). She also gets false eyelashes SEWN ONTO HER FACE, in a scene that’s very, VERY difficult to watch because it looks so real.
Elvira is then sent to a finishing school, where she’s constantly berated by the snotty directress for being sort of dumpy and uncoordinated. The other teacher at the finishing school, though, actually takes a shine to Elvira and encourages her by telling her how brave she is; the other girls are just naturally beautiful, she points out, but Elvira is willing to work and suffer for it. She gifts Elvira with a tapeworm egg that will make her lose weight, and despite her sister’s disgust, Elvira eagerly swallows it down. You just know the tapeworm angle is gonna lead to some icky situations down the line, and indeed, this suspicion will turn out to be correct.
Quite by chance, Elvira stumbles across the prince and his two douchey friends in the woods one day, and though she tries to watch them in secret, she accidentally makes a noise and they spot her. At this stage she still has her nose job contraption on, and the prince basically tells his friends that he wouldn’t ever have sex with THAT. Elvira is heartbroken when she discovers what an arrogant piece of shit the prince is, but afterward, she seems to try to justify the incident by convincing herself that Julian didn’t mean what he said and is actually a lovely person.
Despite all her efforts, Elvira still doesn’t look the way she wants to, and she starts to become discouraged because she’s sure that the beautiful Agnes will steal her thunder at the upcoming ball. But luckily for her, Elvira happens to see Agnes having sex with her secret boyfriend, stable boy Isak (Malte Myrenberg Gårdinger), and she immediately tattles to her mother. Rebekka is outraged and denigrates Agnes to a house servant (hence Cinderella), and sends Isak packing. It would seem that Agnes is now out of the running for the prince’s affections, as servant girls aren’t invited to the festivities.
As the ball approaches, all of Elvira and Rebekka’s work seems to start paying off, as once Elvira’s nose is healed and the tapeworm has shaved off some poundage, Elvira has transformed into quite a beauty (a very expensive wig and gown doesn’t hurt, either). Of course, you know and I know this is not going to end well, and that there’s likely some disgusting worm-based shenanigans afoot, as well as some actual foot trauma in store (as in the original Cinderella tale, where the stepsisters cut off their toes and heels in order to fit into Cinderella’s small slipper).
This movie was just wonderful from start to finish; the story is obviously somewhat familiar, but there were enough variations to the plot to keep you on your toes (pun very much intended). The character of Elvira is so tragic on one hand that you’re sort of rooting for her, but she also does such unhinged, monstrous things that you don’t really want to see her succeed either. The theme of the movie, specifically the way some women will go through horrific pain just to be the prettiest girl in the room, is very poignant and relevant, and actually gave me some of the same vibes as last year’s The Substance (although the two films are radically different otherwise).
The movie also plays a bit with the fairy-tale ending trope, as even though Agnes/Cinderella does “win” the prince in the end and Elvira ends up looking like twenty miles of bad road, the audience knows what a shallow, abusive chode the prince is and what Cinderella can probably expect from her marriage to him going forward. So maybe Elvira got the better end of the deal after all.
A fantastic debut all around: gross, wickedly funny, heartfelt, and lovely to look at. It’s amazing that this is a debut film, and I’ll definitely be checking out more of Emilie Blichfeldt’s work in the future.
Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.
The Scare Salon 