Directed By Emilie Blichfeldt

Starring – Lea Myren, Ane Dahl Torp, Thea Sofie Loch Naess

The Plot – In a twisted take on the classic Cinderella story, the film follows Elvira (Myren) as she battles to compete with her insanely beautiful stepsister (Loch Naess). In a fairy-tale kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will go to any lengths to catch the Prince’s (Isac Calmroth) eye. It’s a gory tale of the blood and sweat, grit and gold that goes into making Elvira the belle of the ball.

Rated R for gruesome violence, brutality and adult language

The Ugly Stepsister | Official Trailer | Shudder

POSITIVES

In an age of cheaply processed and creatively uninspired Disney re-imaginings, “The Ugly Stepsister” stands out as gruesome grandeur of body horror set among the backdrop of Cinderella’s bounce to the ball towards finding true love. This is quite ambitious for Blichfeldt because she’s essentially deconstructing a strong part of her audience’s nostalgia, however in doing so not only succeeds as a gut-wrenching adaptation, but also in outlining and articulating the toxicity within female beauty that literally kills these women to present themselves to someone else. On the former, the story is uniquely told this time around from the ugly stepsister’s perspective, and what this allows is not only an empathetic exploration through the vantage point of someone deemed inferior by society, based entirely on her appearance, but towards illustrating just how disgusting and perverted the story of Cinderella can truly be when it comes to maximizing the vulnerabilities of the innocent in order to galvanize themselves in a room full of objective upper class snobs. The latter obviously pertains more to the horror elements of the movie’s undertaking, but without any of the traditional frights that we’ve come to expect from the genre, instead saving its splurge in scares for the constant discomfort of the beautifying objective, the likes of which so many outsiders partake in, which is made all the more effectively unnerving with Blichfeldt vividly painting such an intentionally uncomfortable atmosphere in both her imagery and sound designs. Being that this is a Nordic produced film, the presentation immerses its audience in the foggy ambiance of fantasy sequences and gloomy ugliness of the color coordination within the movie’s present day storytelling, and the result conjures something straight out of a Jess Franco body cautionary tale, where the trauma and tragedy of what’s transpiring manifests itself into the air of the engagement, feeling like something out of the most twistedly demented episode of TV’s “Black Mirror”. Because the script establishes the urgency in stakes between this down-on-their-luck family, it only further affirms Elvira’s determination with making over herself, where the levels of punishment that she continuously puts herself through sacrifices her decaying sanity for beauty, yet even despite the decisions that very few in the audience will justify or go along with, never sacrifices the empathetic factor for the character, instead further magnetizing the air of her undying tragedy for the attention of a douchebag Prince without any of the charm or gentility of the character we were brought up adoring. Despite the frights being marginalized to more of the psychological stimulus, the meticulously deposited carnage candy in gore here is really quite effectively convincing, with a dominance in practical effects that features everything from hacked limbs to expulsed tapeworms stirring a vulnerability in the stomachs of its audience. It’s not exactly top tier of the most gruesome things I’ve ever experienced on film, but there is a commitment to the grotesque certainly worthy of the mainstream attention that it has recently been receiving in the tabloids, feeling like something that’s far too risqué for daytime cinema, yet something that fits perfectly in the confines of midnight screenings everywhere. The effects work brought me in, but it was the hefty sound designs that made me continuously squirm in my seat, with a bold detailing of Elvira’s internalized scarring that feels like it frequently builds louder while on its way to a full circle of an inevitable climax meant to punctuate the exclamation point to such an awkwardly engaging story, even as one that doesn’t always make the most of its 105 minutes of screentime. The performances also captivate quite remarkably to the struggles of these characters, particularly that of Lea Myren and Thea Sofie Loch Naess, who each offer such a stunning duality to their respective portrayals that really do dredge up the real ugliness of the materialization of beauty. This is especially the case for Myren, who not only changes in personality within the murky depths of her long-term transformation, with boldly piercing eye deposits that the camera work focuses intently on, but also summons all of the rage and relentlessness of someone in the public eye for the first time in her life, forcing her to come to terms with her own limitless avenues to keep and even convince others that she is indeed a different person. As for Thea Sofie Loch Naess, her initial beginnings as a rich snob eventually succumb to a conflicted stature that far transcends her work as a traditional antagonist in these movies, where the character’s own isolation factors and tragic love triangle caught in the middle force her to make some difficult decisions, and you feel all of the weight of these choices with Thea digging deep into her emotional diaphragm, in order to conjure something constantly enlightening in ways that gives her character far more depth than I was expecting.

NEGATIVES

Unfortunately, while Blichfeldt makes a lot of great decisions with the execution of her hauntingly harrowing, she’s often subjected to the desire to constantly push the envelope of what’s shown, and the result is a film that feels far too preoccupied with shocking the audience, over telling a story that constantly makes the most of its minutes. To be fair, I am on board when it comes to showcasing the audaciousness and resiliency of ones direction, but when it comes to gross out moments pertaining to sexual material, which constantly push the envelope too far, and others pertaining to horror, which I feel don’t push the envelope far enough, it leads to a conflicting experience with the obvious intention that doesn’t quite remarkably land the complete execution like last year’s “The Substance”, a film that is often being compared to this one, but for nothing other than both films pertaining to the toxicity of beauty. This is felt the loudest during the ending climax, with one aspect of Elvira’s transformation finally coming back to catch up with her, yet the sequence is neither long enough or impactful enough to maximize the potential of its tragic discourse, and the film just kind of ends on a cautionary whimper rather than a last second remorseless bang, where Elvira’s desire to appeal to an adoring audience could’ve impacted everyone for playing into a bigger picture. On top of this, there’s an undefined supernatural element to the film that required a bit more suspension of disbelief than I was initially expecting, particularly the subtle-yet-ratcheted transformation of Elvira taking shape over a period of five days. While I can definitely go along with anything unnatural that a movie this morbid asks me to endure, there’s a three day period in the middle of this journey that is sacrificed by on-screen text flashing us forward quite dramatically, and the sudden shift of Elvira’s appearance, which does effectively transform her from the woman we met during the opening act of the movie, wastes away the opportunities of utilizing this time in ways that could’ve further played into the newfound wisdom within the selfish choices that she’s made for her body, leaving it feeling a bit rushed during the initial arcs, yet stalled in the depths of the movie’s slow-burn pacing, which are sure to test the patience of an audience expecting results quickly and prominently. Finally, while every character inside of the movie’s established love triangle are given ample time to flesh out something endearing to the engagement, despite this coming from people deemed unrelatable to me personally, the wasting of Elvira’s sister, Alma (Played by Flo Fagerli), barely rises to the surface in a story that passes her by, leaving it difficult to even assume why they would include a character so close to Elvira if they truly had so little for her. Once the third act comes to fruition, it feels like the script will finally exploit her in ways that are integral to the movie’s foundation, especially since her own appearance changes a bit noticeably, however she’s really just conscience and background fodder for Elvira’s own suffering, which is unfortunate because she’s essentially the only one who realizes how disturbing all of this is, with great facial work from Fagerli, in order to convey a connection to what the audience is feeling.

OVERALL
“The Ugly Stepsister” is the belle of the ball, with regards to twistedly subversive Disney re-imagining’s, granting us a darker and far more horrific side of the Cinderella fairytale than sanitized bedtime stories for kids could ever let on. In unlocking the devastating realities and reveling of the patriarchal toxicity surrounding female beauty, the film reaches for stomach-churning frights that feel detectable from masterful effects work and sound designs continuously clueing us into Elvira’s irreversible devastation, and though the film squanders the maximization of its own potential with a slow-burn and sedated exploration to its storytelling, the fearless audacity of Emilie Blichfeldt’s timeless direction ultimately wins out, making this a must-see for horror hounds who like nightmare-inducing commentary before the sun comes up.

My Grade: 7.5 or B-