The Cinderella story returns to its macabre, gruesome roots in this demented subversion from Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt.
It’s no secret that the Disney variations of classic fairy tales are full of timeless magic and wondrous spectacle, but the Brothers Grimm-written source material on which they’re based is more graphic and darker than the average Joe might expect. Leave it to overseas filmmakers to keep their ominous sides alive, and one such director to commit one to celluloid is Norwegian Emilie Blichfeldt with The Ugly Stepsister, which premiered on the opening night of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and now that it’s available to stream on Shudder in the United States and for digital download in the United Kingdom, belongs on the radar of horror fans who like their scares macabre, disgusting and bleak in nature, yet creative and genuinely terrifying.
The titular ugly stepsister refers to Elvira (Lea Myren), who along with prepubescent Alma (Flo Fagerli) becomes a stepsister to Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) after the marriage of their mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) to Agnes’ father Otto (Ralph Carlsson). Their wedding in front of his large estate in Swedlandia goes well, and all is happy . . . but hours later, Otto suddenly collapses at dinner and passes away. It’s a solemn scene inside their manor, made worse by the revelation that Otto had no money to leave for Agnes, Rebekka or her two daughters.
Fearing herself too old to attract a new suitor and that Agnes will vie for the affections of the wealthy but shallow Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth), Rebekka puts her efforts into morphing Elvira from conventionally unattractive to the most beautiful girl in all the land in hopes she will marry into Julian’s royal fortune. Elvira is smitten enough with him to go through all the operations to which her mother and finishing school superiors subject her, such as a primitive rhinoplasty, the removal of her garish braces and ingesting a tapeworm to help her lose weight. In the fortnights leading up to a ball hosted by Julian and his family, tensions rise between Elvira and Agnes, as do the procedure’s sickening effects on Elvira’s body. How far will she go to get the man of her dreams, and how far will she be pushed by Rebekka in this selfish quest for riches?
Rebekka lives up to the evil stepmother role in which she is written, and the darkness of the household Elvira and Alma are raised in is brilliantly realized by Emilie Blichfeldt’s direction that’s so refined and confident, it’s hard to believe this Sundance hit is only her first feature film. Elvira saunters down the hallways at night shrouded in total darkness, while every shot has at least one detail that highlights the revolting nature of her world, from the way Elvira’s curls often resemble a hive of cockroaches to the film’s many viscerally disgusting scares, such as the nightmarish extreme closeups during one of her many esthetic surgeries, and the role various bugs play in the movie. Eating before and/or during The Ugly Stepsister is not recommended.
What’s especially admirable about The Ugly Stepsister is Blichfeldt’s cleverness as a storyteller to employ grounded sensibilities to keep the fairy tale elements of the original Cinderella story intact, while making use of her small budget and subverting the fantasy genre with crushing reality. By telling the Brothers Grimm tale from the perspective of one of the stepsisters, Blichfeldt has room to depict how harshly women were punished for exploring themselves without a husband in this time period, and adds empathetic dimensions to Elvira, Alma and Agnes as characters by portraying them as sad victims of a demanding, superficial high society.
The musical score of The Ugly Stepsister also smartly juxtaposes sweeping orchestral sounds across all eras, like a pipe organ and a sweeping harp, with contemporary synthesizers as if to propose that the irrational beauty standards of today are still the same as they are during the era in which this film takes place. And as the poor pawn subjected to cruel and painful operations, Lea Myren conveys Elvira’s haunted mix of fear, obsession and insanity over the course of her self-destruction through her eyes alone in a stellar breakthrough performance.
The Ugly Stepsister is a remarkable piece of Nordic horror, but what’s here from a thematic standpoint is all-too familiar, not helped by the fact we’re not even a full year removed from the release of The Substance which already covered this film’s ideas. There’s an interesting route that could have been explored about the contradictory role women in authority play in carrying out these benchmarks for attractiveness given Rebekka’s nefariousness and greed, but the movie cares more about the next character moment and gross turn than anything profound.
But The Ugly Stepsister does not hold back when it gets disturbing, and what’s there will be appealing for fans of body horror and fractured fairy tales alike. Audiences will gawk at the amazing production and costume design, feel sympathy for the trio of stepsisters, and watch between fingers throughout Elvira’s horrifying progression until Blichfeldt’s debut reaches the end. It’s not for everyone and may not reinvent the wheel, but for those craving a twisted and timely horror-fantasy, The Ugly Stepsister makes for a sick and scary, but overall satisfying fill.