Film Brain reviews an extreme horror film that turns the classic Cinderella story on it's head, things get very ugly indeed...
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00:00Hello, and welcome to Projector, and on this episode, Cinderella gets a bloody twist in
00:05Shudder's Norwegian horror film, The Ugly Stepsister.
00:24In the magical kingdom of Swedenlandia, Elvira and Alma, played by Leah Myron,
00:29and Flo Fagarelli, accompany their mother Rebecca, played by Anne Doyle Tarp, as she marries Otto,
00:35played by Ralph Carlson, who has a beautiful daughter named Agnes, played by Tia Sophia
00:40Lachnais. When Otto dies, suddenly, they realise that he's penniless, and the family's only hope
00:47is for one of the daughters to marry Prince Julian, played by Isaac Conroth. Elvira is determined to do
00:53so, but in order to try and succeed instead of Agnes, she will go to extreme lengths.
01:00The Ugly Stepsister is the featured art tour debut of Emily Bleakfeld, and is partially inspired by
01:05her own struggles with body image, especially in her teenage years. It comes at a time where
01:10fairy tales are very much being revisited and updated, especially by Disney themselves,
01:15to cash in on their earlier animated versions in live-action form. And in the modern day,
01:20those Disney-fied versions is how we commonly think of fairy tales as being gentle, family-friendly,
01:27mostly moral stories, mainly for children. But those fairy tales are often folklore that's been told,
01:33reiterated, and adapted for centuries. And that's true of Cinderella, which has had various versions
01:40and variations which are far more violent and cruel than the wish-fulfillment story we largely think
01:45of it as. Especially so for the Brothers Grimm version, which the Ugly Stepsister is specifically
01:52inspired by, and takes the nastiness of that take and cranks it up even further.
01:58Cinderella might be one of the most commonly told stories of all time, and there's been
02:01countless versions in every flavour you can think of. But even some of the more recent
02:06adaptations have tried to address some of the criticisms about the story, namely that Cinderella
02:11herself is quite a passive character. That's more a critique of the Disney version in specific,
02:17although the wildly awful Camila Cabello musical version, with its go-boss take on the character,
02:22is probably a swing too much in the opposite direction. God, having to remember James Corden
02:28as a CGI mouse is almost more horrifying than anything in The Ugly Stepsister, and that's really
02:33saying something. But a more general complaint is that the story inherently values virtue by appearance.
02:40Cinderella is a good person, and therefore is pretty, and the Step family are ugly because
02:46they are bad. And it's a very caricatured logic, because the Cinderella we know is a simple story
02:53that can form the basis of a harmful internal logic in a person. If I'm a good person, why am I not
03:00outwardly beautiful? And given how often we try to find new angles on familiar stories, it genuinely
03:06surprises me. It's taken until now to have a version which tells the story from the point of view of the
03:11stepsister on film. And The Ugly Stepsister isn't a Maleficent-esque spin that turns the villain into a
03:17misunderstood anti-hero. It drags the tale, kicking and screaming, into the complexities of the adult
03:24world, deconstructs it, and then splatters Cinderella's dress with blood. But what it tries to do
03:31is find empathy in the archetype. And when we meet stepsister Elvira, there's a distinctly
03:37childlike quality to her despite being 18 years old, with her teeth already in braces and her hair
03:43in curls. Elvira comes across as naive in a way which immediately signals how sheltered and repressed
03:50life under her mother has likely been, that she hasn't really grown up. And her first glimpse at Agnes
03:57immediately makes her feel uncomfortable. It instantly sets up the dynamic between them as
04:02she looks at Agnes, who seems so much more mature and womanly than Elvira, and judges her for it.
04:09Agnes is the ideal that Elvira wants to be, and just being in her presence is enough to feel inadequate.
04:16And she may be this film's version of Cinderella, but Agnes is far from a perfect person. She feels that
04:22these people are not fit to marry her father, and when he dies, she harshly rebukes Elvira for trying
04:28to console her by comparing the loss of each other's fathers. Of course, the fact that Elvira is playing
04:34with her hairbrush, a passive symbol of wanting to be Agnes, probably doesn't help matters. But once the
04:41prince starts looking for a bride, the whole film becomes a competition and a comment on the way that
04:47society often pits women against each other. Literally so, as everyone is trying to win the
04:53prince's affections, and especially his wealthy inheritance. Elvira and Agnes function as mirror
04:59images of each other in many ways, and this is a version where both of these characters are both
05:05victims and perpetrators of cruelty in their own right. When Elvira declares that she intends to
05:11marry the prince, her mother laughingly scoffs at her, but then quickly sets about trying to
05:17transform her into the ideal suitress, as if Cronenberg directed My Fair Lady. She's enrolled
05:23in a finishing school, ostensibly to teach Hermas and Grace, but it's mostly a series of constant
05:29humiliations by Madame Vajna, played by Katazina Herrmann, who makes clear that the only reason she's
05:36keeping her around is because her mother is paying for it, and not because she can actually fulfill
05:42her ambitions. Elvira's awkwardness and lack of finesse is singled out. In particular, there's moments
05:49where Vajna puts her right at the back of the class, but it is particularly clear against the entire
05:56class of well-trained, well-to-do women who are all after exactly the same thing. But the most prominent
06:04element is Elvira's mother taking her to see Doctor Aesthetic, played by a wonderfully grotesque Adam
06:10Lundgren for some primitive early surgeries, and the body horror is in high gear in these scenes,
06:16with all the tools shot like instruments of torture. Because they are, pretty much. It's a very darkly
06:23comic edge to much of what's going on in the film, but that still won't stop audiences absolutely
06:27flinching at the agonisingly painful techniques from a hammer-inflicted nose job that requires
06:34Elvira to spend much of the first half in a velvet-laced brace to set it on her nose,
06:39almost like she's being Frankensteined into shape. There's a later moment where Elvira has
06:45false eyelashes stitched on, and I'm not really a fan of eye trauma at the best of times, and I genuinely
06:52had to look away during the latter scene as the camera focuses on the hook, going through the eyelid
06:59in these tight macro close-ups. It's skin-crawling stuff. It's designed to make you feel uncomfortable,
07:06but that's the point, because this is an absolutely brutal critique of beauty standards and the
07:12dangerous, disturbing lengths that people will go to to try and think what is the best version of
07:17themselves, especially when you consider that, historically, things like makeup contained things
07:22that were actually poisonous for people. And there's nothing really wrong with Elvira to start
07:27off with, but she's desperate to try and conform, to turn to jam a square peg into a round hole.
07:35The more pressure she places herself to succeed, the more she internalises these harmful expectations,
07:42and the more her self-hatred drives her. She keeps repeating the mantra through the film,
07:48beauty is pain, that enough suffering will mean that she gets her reward, even though we know that
07:56her chances for a happy ending are very unlikely. Elvira likes her cakes, but she also hates her shape,
08:04so in a stunningly gross subplot, she ingests a tapeworm egg, resulting in numerous instances of
08:12squelchy, gurgling stomach noises that are a constant source of tension,
08:17there is something literally growing inside of her that is very unpleasant, and rot is a major visual
08:25motif through the film. The opening credits play over Otto's corpse on a table of decaying food as
08:31the camera pans over it, and Rebecca refuses to pay for a funeral for him and uses all the money to fund
08:38Elvira's transformation, so she just leaves his corpse in a room to decompose somewhere. But that rot is in
08:46Elvira, both figuratively and literally, the closer she becomes to being the beautiful person she wants
08:53to be, the one that she imagines in her juvenile fantasy sequences where she imagines her happily ever
09:00after, the harder it becomes to maintain, and the more it is destroying her in every sense. And by the
09:08time it comes to the most notorious moments of the grim version, you'll be watching through your fingers
09:13as you just want this poor girl to stop punishing herself. As I said, it is very blackly funny,
09:21but it's also deeply tragic, and because the movie invites you to step into Elvira's shoes, it's hard
09:28not to feel sad for her, rather than most other versions which see what happens to her as a fitting
09:34punishment. But there's also an allegory for adolescence in Elvira's transformation as well,
09:39in this quick attempt to move from being a child to being an adult, and the embarrassment and
09:44unpleasantness of navigating that change. That sense of social ostracisation feels like it's very much
09:51drawn from the director's own experiences, and I did personally relate to that as someone whose own
09:56teenage years were very difficult, and still leave plenty of scars to be honest. But that's also
10:03accompanied by a burgeoning awareness of sexuality, and that is a marked difference between Elvira and
10:08Agnes, as her romantic fantasies are of a chaste storybook kind. Agnes, however, is already sexually
10:14active because this Cinderella is not a virgin. She's having a secret affair with a stable boy,
10:20and when Elvira stumbles upon them in the act, it's very explicit. There's some proper 18 certificate
10:26rated close-ups, and it serves as a culture shock for Elvira that she's both disgusted by it,
10:32but also a bit jealous of it at the same time. And there is this idea that this cross-cultural
10:38relationship is actually what Agnes wants, that her attempt to get the prince is mostly to secure
10:44financial independence away from her stepfamily and not out of romance. But that thread is kind of
10:52left hanging after the stable boy exits the film. And the prince is not exactly a catch in this version,
10:58as you'd probably expect, as he and his entourage are crass, leering, judgmental slimes in their own
11:04right, snickering remarks like, I wouldn't want to F that. But the men are largely kept to the side in
11:11this version, as it largely focuses on how women uphold their standards upon each other.
11:16But Elvira isn't the only character going through an adolescence. Her younger sister Alma is just
11:22about to start her own, as she has her first period during the events of the film. But far from being
11:27cruel like her sister, as in other incarnations, Alma might be the character with the clearest eyes
11:32about both her mother's cruelty, but also her sister's increasingly unhealthy attitudes,
11:38saying directly to her that she has a sickness of the mind. And she's not wrong,
11:44she sees them for what they are. Alma has a small arc running on the sidelines of the film,
11:50but she's the one that grows up the most of the two sisters into someone ultimately assertive,
11:55and rejects the toxic values of where the story takes place.
12:00Agnes, meanwhile, largely runs through the typical trappings of the Cinderella story,
12:04be it shamed and humiliated by her stepmother, or having her luxury stripped away and forced to do
12:10menial work. But even as she loses her class while Elvira ascends in her own status, Agnes,
12:16in true Cinderella fashion, never loses her beauty or generally sunny attitude. Even as she sings to
12:22herself while milking the cows, Elvira might be looking down upon her, but she is still envious of her.
12:30Agnes is what the world wants girls to be, and the world bends towards her even when she's down,
12:36and that's something that even Elvira cannot attain. So when Bleakfeldt uses elements of the
12:41Cinderella story, incorporating bits and pieces from various incarnations, she does so with a sense
12:47of magical realism, at once in keeping with the familiar images and story beats, while covering
12:53them in muck and mess, like the beleaguered heroine before her transformation. So you have this image of
12:59the torn up dress being repaired, but done so by silkworms who stitch the pieces together.
13:07And that extends to the whole film, which has a wonderfully gothic candlelit look in keeping with
13:13the darker edges of classic fairy tales, but also grand and opulent in the key sequence in the ball,
13:21marked with splashes of dark claret. The whole film is both beautiful and brutal simultaneously.
13:29It evokes the sense of a classic painting or tapestry in its combination of the two.
13:34The score by Cader and Ville de Tove is also really memorable, reimagining classical themes with pop
13:41synths, which gives a very modern edge to old tradition that is almost punky and countercultural,
13:48and it fits the twisted tone of the film like a perfectly sized slipper.
13:53The Ugly Stepsister is not for the squeamish, to put it mildly,
13:57but I thought it did an excellent job of subverting and sending up the classic Cinderella story,
14:02and finding complexities in the original story's simple messages.
14:07It actively wants to make the audience feel uncomfortable as it rebukes beauty standards and
14:13all the messaging that girls have to be pretty and nice by focusing on the gross, disgusting,
14:19and the nasty, daring you to look away. And in that way, it very much evokes Caroline For Shaw's The
14:27Substance, which did much the same thing and was one of my favourite films of last year.
14:32And even the trailer for The Ugly Stepsister evokes that movie's promotional materials.
14:37I thought of The Substance as being like a grotesque comedy, and it feels like a contemporary fairy tale.
14:43And while The Ugly Stepsister might not go quite as far as the unforgettable firehose finale of The
14:50Substance, it is still extreme. But I don't really want to pit these two movies against each other,
14:56especially not discussing a film about the unfair competition between women, because really,
15:02the two films complement each other and have similar ideas. They would make for a particularly
15:08confrontational double feature. And if you enjoyed The Substance, definitely give this a go.
15:15But moreover, this is an excellent debut feature for Emily Bleakfeldt that proves the enduring power
15:21of the story that it's based on and how truly Malibu it is. And while some people might get irrationally
15:27angry about supposedly ruining classic fairy tales, despite the fact they have constantly changed
15:33through history, it is always important to tell them in different ways, even if they don't always
15:38work. And hey, if you don't like a version, don't worry, a different narrator is always right around
15:44the corner. And with Bleakfeldt's own perspective on it, she doesn't tarnish the Cinderella legend,
15:50she enriches it. If you like this review and you want to support my work, you can give me a tip at
15:55my Ko-fi page, or YouTube's Super Thanks feature which is right below the video. Or you can be my fairy
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16:11simply like, share, and subscribe. It all helps. Until next time, I'm Matthew Buck, fading out.