The Ugly Stepsister

Blichfeldt blends the more brutal folktale elements with phantasmatic longing to create a version of Cinderella where beauty is pain for some women, but life is pain for all of them.

A wonderfully extreme spin on the Cinderella story that doesn’t hold back showing the lengths the title character goes to to meet Cinderella standards. A top tier first feature for Emilie Blichfeldt and a staggeringly impressive debut for lead, Lea Myren.

Emilie Blichfeldt knows the exact point of queasiness to which she can push an audience and gradually tests how much further she can move that mark with each successive scene.

One of the best horror films of the decade so far.

The Ugly Stepsister is savagely brutal and yet strangely beautiful.

Blichfedlt’s aesthetic ambition -- hyper-pop prevails here -- and a committed performance from Les Myren as the titular stepsister help enliven a film that, at times, is weighed down by its more farcical antics.

A movie as gorgeous as it is gruesome, complete with a few moments of gore that had a handful of people audibly fighting the urge to retch in the aisles.

A debut that will turn heads (and stomachs), The Ugly Stepsister is a fascinating slant on a time old story. A grim and grotesque body horror that feels entirely modern with its barbaric search for beauty.



Blichfeldt has the natural makings of a great satirist, who understands when to torture the audience just a little bit more than is necessary. Whatever she makes next, I’ll be first in line to see.

Blichfeldt is able to pointedly and scarily address her of-the-moment themes without breaking the finely crafted period spell her movie casts.