Recently a new body horror movie has hit the market, and although it was really hard to find in theaters, I was able to catch it on shudder. If you haven’t heard of it yet, “The Ugly Stepsister” is a new body horror movie that was promised to make viewers throw up while watching it. In short it focuses on the Grimm's fairy tale version of Cinderella but told from the point of view of the stepsister, Elvira, who in this version is made to undergo crude and painful cosmetic procedures by her mother to make her beautiful and hopefully marry the prince. There’s giant tapeworms, eyelash sewing, and nose breaking. With all the promotion I’ve seen about it and the Cronenberg comparisons I was incredibly excited for it, but did it live up to the expectations I had? Not really, but it’s still one of the best movies to come out this year and one of my favorite movies right now.
For people who can’t watch it or are worried about it being too gross, here's the recap. The movie begins with the two sisters Elvira’s and Alma’s mother getting married to Agnes (AKA Cinderella's) dad. There's a quick scene of Elvira and Agnes meeting but we don’t really get to see them interact one on one like sisters anywhere but this scene, which I do think we could have seen some more of. But anyway, right after this, at dinner, Agnes' father dies and leaves her as an orphan with her stepmother as her new guardian. Elvira tries to comfort Agnes, trying to relate to her by telling her about her fathers death, but Agnes is too grief-stricken to accept any of it, and tells Elvira the only reason her father married her mom was for money. This is surprising since Elvira's mom has no money and only married the father for his money. Because of this, the mother decides she has to marry off Elvira, since her sister Alma hasn’t hit puberty yet, and Elvira has been invited to the princes ball. But Elvira is seen as ugly by everyone in this movie, so her mom makes her undergo a crude nose surgery and eyelash extensions sewn into her eyelid. She also goes to “Finishing classes” (I’d never heard of them before but they seem somewhat like etiquette classes?) focused around preparing for the ball so that she can seduce the prince. These classes further her disdain for Agnes as she becomes the favorite and Elvira is still constantly ridiculed for her looks. A woman from her class gives Elvira a tapeworm, without her mothers knowledge, So that she can lose weight. Anyway, 5 full camera butt shots later, Elvira makes it to the ball and is the most beautiful girl there, until Agnes shows up. We all know the Cinderella story so I’ll spare the details, but after the ball Elvira has a breakdown and chops off her foot to fit into Agnes shoe, her mother catches this and instead of helping her she sedates her and chops off the other foot. This is all in vain because as we all know, Cinderella ends up with the prince. But all hope isn’t lost as the younger sister Alma has decided they need to leave, but first she removes the tapeworm in Elvira's stomach, which is my personal favorite and the grossest scene in the entire movie. After the two get on their horses and leave, not sure where, but anywhere away from their mom.
Onto the actual review, the actors in this movie were all perfectly chosen, Agnes specifically is one of my favorite portrayals of Cinderella yet, though it’s not saying a lot since I’ve never been a fan of princess movies. I’ve noticed a lot of people already are misconstruing her character as evil in this version, since it’s told from the stepsisters point of view, but this doesn't really make much sense to me. Agnes is a little rude at times sure, but who wouldn’t be if immediately after your dad married he died, you became an orphan, and now your stepfamily you barely know is settling in and taking over. The characters in this movie are interesting because there isn’t really a villain except for the mom, Agnes and Elvira only have problems with each other because the mother pits them against each other. The character’s here are engaging and as much as they can be annoying at times I never hate them.
The way the movies are filmed is also really engaging and beautiful, it looks like an animated film but it’s real. Elvira's fantasy scenes in particular are my favorite, the dreamy filter they put over it is really gorgeous and I’d kill to see a whole movie in that style. My one, not really a complaint but just something that stood out was, there are an odd amount of butt shots. It starts off with Elvira's nude body as she binges food, which makes sense okay. Then we get a shot off the prince's butt as he's peeing? Maybe he’s jacking off? Still not sure what was happening in this scene. Anyway we see the prince's butt as he’s talking to his friends about having sex and objectifying women. Then we see the stable boy and Agnes’ butt as Elvira catches them having relations in the stable, we also see a penis but that’s really the only time we see one of those. I’m not complaining, just not used to seeing so many butts on screen, especially men's.
My one complaint isn’t really about the movie so much as it is the marketing. Maybe it’s just me but everything I saw about this called it the grossest movie ever and compared it to Cronenberg. I think we need to stop comparing every gross movie to Cronenberg, because when I watched it it really didn’t remind me of his movies. Because of this it made me envision a different kind of movie so I was a little surprised, but I also was kind of disappointed since it wasn’t as gross as I had expected. Not to sound like an edge lord, but when you advertise a movie as making people puke I think it should make me feel sick. But the plastic surgery scenes are surprisingly tame, they made me flinch but I wasn’t sick. The only scene worthy of this reaction is the tapeworm removal scene, I felt that in my throat it was nasty. Overall it’s not the most disturbing movie ever but it is good, just different than expected.
Overall, “The Ugly Stepsister” is worth watching and gets a 10/10 from me. It’s a great mix of fantasy and horror, and I hope we get to see more of the directors, Emilie Blichfeldt, work in the future because her style in this movie was so good and fun to watch. If it says anything, I had such strong opinions on this movie that I came out of my writing hiatus to talk about it so props to everyone involved.
Thank you for reading, I will be talking myself out of an Elvira tattoo now.
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