“What if Wicked and The Substance had a grubby baby?” This was the headline for my review of The Ugly Stepsister out of Sundance 2025, as I cheered this twisted fairytale full of violent beauty treatments and body horror.
How ‘The Substance’ broke the Oscars mold
Directed by Emilie Blichfeldt, The Ugly Stepsister re-imagines the tale of Cinderella from the perspective of one of her maligned siblings. Elvira (Lea Myren) wants only to be friends with her pretty and proper new stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss). Well, that and she pines endlessly for the love of the prince, who publishes poetry that has her swooning into romantic fantasies. So when Elvira’s mother promises her a path to wowing royalty at the upcoming ball, she’ll do whatever it takes — even if that means a medieval nose job without anesthesia. And things only get more gruesome from there.
As promised in my review — which is pull-quoted in the above trailer — “The Ugly Stepsister is a deranged and dizzying achievement, folding in a classic story with a bitingly modern satire and bold body horror…Simply put, The Ugly Stepsister is savagely brutal and yet strangely beautiful.”
The Ugly Stepsister opens in theaters April 18.