East Coast Premiere

A delightfully nasty fairy-tale facelift, The Ugly Stepsister drags Cinderella through the mud, blood, and surgical steel in Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt’s jaw-clenching debut. Imagine The Brothers Grimm by way of a medieval Extreme Makeover, with all the body horror and bile-spewing absurdity you could ever wish (upon a star) for—and then some.

Elvira (Lea Myren), the so-called “ugly” stepsister, isn’t hideous by any stretch, but that doesn’t stop her gold-digger mother (Ane Dahl Torp) from demanding an excruciating glow-up in the name of royal matrimony. With a quack doctor wielding chisels, sutures, and eyelash-sewing needles, Elvira is reshaped—nose, teeth, weight, and all—to compete with her cruelly perfect stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) for the prince’s attention. But beauty is a beast, and Elvira’s transformation isn’t just painful—it’s parasitic. Literally.

Blichfeldt’s film isn’t just grim—it’s Grimm, with broken noses, mangled feet, and vomit-inducing diet plans that would make the house of mouse blanch. Lush and grotesque in equal measure, The Ugly Stepsister revels in the filth of high society and the folly of manufactured beauty, wielding its body horror with pitch-black humor and stinging satire. Imagine Poor Things with less horniness and more human taxidermy.

Lea Myren is absolutely fearless, giving Elvira a raw, agonizing physicality—whether she’s wailing through a makeshift nose job or crumbling under the weight of societal expectation. Blichfeldt, meanwhile, proves herself a wickedly sharp filmmaker, balancing the film’s lush period-piece grandeur with some of the most wince-inducing cosmetic carnage this side of The Substance.

With Cinderella heading toward its 75th anniversary, Disney might try to sell us another happily-ever-after. Blichfeldt’s answer? A beautifully ugly, blood-soaked counterpoint, where the real horror isn’t the transformation—it’s the world that demands it.

– Nicole McControversy

Brattle Passes not accepted.