The Ugly Stepsister (2025) - Review

The recent breakout film from director Emilie Blichfeldt has caused quite a stir in the horror community but for all the right reasons. The Shudder original Polish/Swedish film is based on the story of Cinderella but it takes a much more grounded and twisted turn than most adaptations of the story as we follow from the perspective of Elvira, one of the stepsisters to Agnes a.k.a our Cinderella.

This is a bit of a gross film to watch in all honesty and is definitely more focused on suspense, psychological and body horror/gore and it makes sense for an otherwise really grounded feeling film. If gore, blood, rotten flesh, vomiting, and stuff like that bothers you, I recommend skipping this film or finding someone who doesn't care about that stuff to tell you when to close your eyes and plug your ears.

I will say I love love love the costumes in this film so much! Elvira's ball gown is stunning and I adore the color scheme and this seems to be a Victorian style film so the costumes are in that Victorian style which makes me consider classifying this a gothic or gothic-esque horror and I love that. It feels like a fantasy story but also feels completely grounded in reality.

This film does actually make me kind of low-key hate Agnes/Cinderella in this film but I don't love anyone in this film and I think that's so incredibly important and a good thing because these characters are so complex that it creates this morally gray-ness to even the traditionally "good" or "evil" characters and creates that interesting dynamic that makes literally no one like-able in this film.

I also want to note that this film is in a foreign language and has subtitles, I don't find it at all hard to follow along with which usually is the main reason I don't typically watch foreign films since it's too much to focus on with reading through the subtitles and the visuals and then all the themes and hypothetical topics to the story. This one is pretty seamless between everything and it all makes sense and cohesively blends together to tell the story.

This story saddens me because it's a documentation of how much a young woman harms herself in order to look a certain way and appease certain people. Elvira, first takes off her braces that she probably still needs and goes to someone who calls himself Dr. Estheique who then breaks her nose very violently to reshape it. Later, Elvira is given a tapeworm to ingest to loose weight and it works but soon her hair starts falling out and she coughs up blood and its so saddening to watch. While I was watching this film, it felt a lot like Pearl (2022) in which a young woman has her heart set on stardom or an unattainable fantasy and does everything in her power to get it and when it doesn't happen, she crashes out hard. The actress for Elvira in the Ugly Stepsister even resembles Mia Goth in a few ways and I think that the similarities between Pearl and The Ugly Stepsister aren't coincidental and that's not a bad thing. There's a reason we all loved Pearl so much and that's the unhinged nature of women in more traditional and whimsical stories. I think Pearl was supposed to be akin to The Wizard of Oz and has a whimsical nature to it which makes the gore and unhinged nature of the characters stand out for the best. Obviously with a Cinderella retelling, its going to be whimsical and fantastical in some nature and I think we need more films about women crashing out because they're fun but you can also relate to having been that angry or sad over not achieving or not getting something like these girls have (but we obviously didn't hurt anyone).

I'm gonna dive right into the spoilers section since that's the heart of the horror in this film.

Shudder Original Film Poster for The Ugly Stepsister (2025)

So the majority of the body horror elements com out during the last 30 minutes of the film. After Cinderella appears at the ball and Elvira runs away sobbing in pain, she throws up a few tapeworm larvae and I think this is the turning point in the story. We know she's wearing a wig to hide all of her bald spots and just knowing that's under the wig makes this part really saddening. When she returns home angry at Cinderella/Agnes for stealing her prince, she attacks her with a clever and while she's not knocked or hurt, Elvira takes the shoe from Agnes (the legendary slipper of course) and brings it to her mother who couldn't care less about Agnes and just cares about the fact that Elvira didn't get the prince. Still crashing out, Elvira goes to her room and tries to fit into the slipper but her foot is too big for it. In a rush decision, she chops her toes off and blood quirts everywhere and its terrifying to watch. She passes out from the pain and her mother comes in, figures out what Elvira was trying to do and finishes the job while Elvira remains unconscious on the floor. But the lucky ducks we are, we get to watch the whole thing! That was heavy heavy sarcasm if you couldn't tell.

When Elvira wakes up the next morning to hear the trumpets of the prince approaching, she tries to stand but cant as her feet are all bloody and bandaged from her mother the night before, she crawls down to meet the prince but falls down the stairs, breaking her nose in the process and she lays on the floor as Agnes looks down at her in disgust and goes out to meet the Prince herself. Elvira is left bloody and broken on the floor sobbing as Agnes/Cinderella I swept away by the Prince. Her younger sister Alma, who is barely in the film comes to help her get the tapeworm out so she can start to get better again. Elvira takes the antidote to get the tapeworm out of her body and there's a peak moment after she initially pukes up some blood and mucus when the insanely large tapeworm is in her throat and blocking her airways. Elvira's eyes are bulging out of her head and her balding scalp is highlighted by the natural light flooding into the room and her teeth and uneven, nose broken and bloody, her skin turn blue and she looks like a corpse. This is when I think the peak body horror shines and immediately after this moment when she is a living corpse, the tapeworm begins to emerge and peak out over her tongue, Alma grabs it and it is huge and this part made me gag really really badly because this thing had to be at least 3-4 feet long and it lands in the bowl. Elvira gasping for air and trying to calm down and breathe after that is really depressing and Alma watches in horror at the thing that was living inside her sister for at least 4 months at this point feeding off of her.

Alma ends up stealing what little gold and jewelry her mother had left and gets Elvira down the stairs by holding her feet up and her walking on her hands and it's a really cute moment when they're both smiling and laughing together. The scene is pretty snowy and light and it makes the horrors of what just happened seem like they are certainly in the past. The two sisters ride off together to start a new and it's really cute and I do like the ending to this story as it's not happy by any means but rather hopeful.

I do really love this film everything from the costumes to the story, the acting and the music Is very old-fairytale/dark fantasy vibe and I love it adding to the atmosphere of this incredibly dark story.

This is why I give The Ugly Step Sister a 9/10