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When I first heard about The Ugly Stepsister, I thought, ‘Great, another horror that's going to ruin one of my favourite childhood movies and annoy a whole bunch of Disney adults in the process.’
However, upon watching the Nordic film, I realized that The Ugly Stepsister is much different from the other fairytale slashers that simply take a beloved character and monstify them. Instead, it leans into what makes fairytales creepy in the first place.
As certain Disney IPs enter the public domain, it has become a bit of a trend to take once magical and cuddly beings and turn them into an axe-wielding Leatherface-like manic, like in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Don’t get me wrong, seeing the honey-loving bear cut up unknowing teens in the woods was fun at first. But seeing movies such as Mickey Mouse-centric Screamboat and Bambi: The Reckoning announced, it kind of feels like we are beating a dead horse at this point.
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So when The Ugly Stepsister came about, I wondered what would be different about this one. But, to my amazement, this film does exactly what the others have failed to do. Rather than ruining once-loved characters, it highlights the flaws of the original fairytale and brings to light how difficult and bleak life was in an era that is so often glamorized in movies.
A different type of fairytale horror
Unlike other horror movies that have jumped on this bandwagon, The Ugly Stepsister doesn't rely on the whole ‘beloved character goes crazy and murders everyone’ trope that the Poohniverse has leaned into. Instead of turning the stepsisters, or even Cinderella, into crazed killers, the movie instead takes already concerning tropes from the original fairytale, like misogyny and the dangers of unrealistic beauty standards, and turns the gore up a notch.
Written and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt, The Ugly Stepsister follows Elvira (Lea Myren), living in a kingdom where beauty trumps all else, something that she begins to realize when she prepares to attend a ball to win the prince’s affection. However, with her beautiful stepsister Agnes (AKA Cinderella) as a contender, Elvira will stop at nothing to make herself the belle of the ball, even if that means going to extreme and disgusting lengths.
It’s no secret that a lot of classic fairytales are far more sinister than their more well-known animated interpretations.
For example, in the original 1812 story of Snow White, the evil queen asks the huntsman to bring her Snow White's lungs and liver so she can eat them. The Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella involves some rather heinous acts, such as Cinderella’s pet doves driving spikes into the stepsisters' eyes, and this is the version that Blichfeldt has chosen to focus on. But despite being a body horror fever dream much closer to The Substance than Disney’s Cinderella, The Ugly Stepsister highlights the real-life issues women had to face at the time Cinderella was written, and still to this day.
If the shoe fits
Although the movie includes its fair share of fantastical and outlandish scenes, such as giant tapeworms and extreme plastic surgery, The Ugly Stepsister explores exactly what women had to put up with in the 19th Century.
From the time we meet the movie’s central female characters, they are all in a desperate race to become more beautiful and desirable than the next, as this is what their value is based on. Elvira wants to be beautiful so that she can be loved, whereas Elvira’s mother uses her looks for financial gain, and Agnes needs to be seen so she can marry and escape her current enslavement.
In those times, women had to use their appearance as a bargaining chip, so in a way, Elvira’s very existence depends on her looks, which kind of explains the lengths she is willing to go to. Although these days we as women have a little more agency than that, we can still relate to feeling like some of our worth is based on how we are perceived. From a young age, we are bombarded with images of what women should look like. This makes the movie more relatable and allows us as an audience to relate to the main character, however irrational her decisions may seem. I cannot, however, say that I relate to a giant yellow killer bear. Sorry, Poohniverse.
All in all, The Ugly Stepsister is a gruesome and wacky look at a story we think we know all too well, but, upon reflection, even the happiest of fairytales have dark and disturbing roots. Now, I am just waiting for another horror director to remake Snow White or Rapunzel.
The Ugly Stepsister is out now. For more, check out our list of the best horror movies, and keep up with upcoming horror movies heading your way.
For more unmissable movie recommendations, check out the previous entries in our weekly Big Screen Spotlight series.
