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Going full bore Grimm to tell a grotesque and pitch-black tale of beauty, class, and the desperate measures taken to confront body dysmorphia, The Ugly Stepsister is a stunning motion picture, beautifully crafted, enthusiastically performed, and executed through a cracked prism of a uniquely Nordic vision.

Emilie Blichfeldt’s dark, funny, provocative film could easily lose a few of these [squeamish] moments to find a (slightly) more mainstream audience than it will end up attracting. But to her credit, she goes all in, and her audaciously militant vision suggests a director whose name is soon to be catnip for actors who like to pester their agents for challenging new projects.

The film’s creative gore alone cannot paper over the ultimate flimsiness of Blichfeldt’s concept, which amounts to an adolescent scrawl of fairytale satire, somehow less interesting and transgressive than Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ which predates it by 46 years.

Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt makes her feature debut with an ingenious revisionist body-horror version of Cinderella, lavishly costumed and designed. There are twists in the style of David Cronenberg and Walerian Borowczyk, with (maybe inevitably) echoes of Carrie and Alien... Blichfeldt has made an elegant debut.

The Ugly Stepsister retells a classic fairy tale from the point of view of the villain, combining a lavishly detailed period setting with explicit, unblinking scenes of historically accurate torture. Its point of view is specific to its teenage protagonist, which limits its emotional range. But it’s effective as a grotesque spectacle.

[W]hat makes Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister so powerful isn’t that it turns the tables on a classic fairy tale... but rather the way it does so, by placing us in a world of bleak, magically-inflected terror that underlines the base grotesquerie of the original... The Ugly Stepsister... reveals a dark truth we’ve probably secretly known all along: Cinderella was always a body horror story.

Blichfeldt pulls out all the stops for this film, giving us a cinematic experience that is ripe with depth and concise commentary, all wrapped in a grisly fairy tale world that is as immersive as it is intense.

“The Substance” is an obvious comparison, but “The Ugly Stepsister” is nastier, angrier, and grosser, if you can believe it. Blichfieldt’s “burn it all down” approach creates turbulence and upset while walking over very well-trod ground.

The Ugly Stepsister is a deranged and dizzying achievement, folding in a classic story with a bitingly modern satire and bold body horror. Blichfeldt weaves these elements together to make a film that feels both of this moment but aesthetically nostalgic... The Ugly Stepsister is savagely brutal and yet strangely beautiful.

Blichfeldt’s version of the folktale does not subvert the story or plead innocence for the titular ugly stepsister like many other fairytale exposés, but seeks to highlight a more relatable angle. It’s an unqualified success; anyone whose hunt for a Prince Charming equivalent ended in heartache, humiliation, or therapy could find cinematic catharsis in The Ugly Stepsister.

Contrasting the freshness of youth with the decay of a world where beauty is the only currency and romance an illusion, “The Ugly Stepsister” strikes gold in Myren’s extraordinary performance.

The Ugly Stepsister eschews a certain staidness that can afflict period dramas. While Blichfeldt might revel in the gruesomeness to a touch too much, this is a well-crafted debut––commendable in the unexpected, gnarled ways it finds sympathy with the downcast and dismissed.