Beauty is Pain — And Then Some: The Ugly Stepsister Review

What if Cinderella’s stepsister took a tapeworm, stitched in her own eyelashes, and chiseled her face into royalty-ready shape… and still didn’t get the prince? The Ugly Stepsister is a feral fairytale retelling that trades ball gowns for body horror and keeps the elegant slipper, but fills it with blood.

Now streaming on Shudder and AMC+, this is a grotesque, satirical spin on Aschenputtel, one that hacks into modern beauty culture with a scalpel and laughs in the face of happily ever after. It’s part Cronenberg, part TikTok spiral, and the rest is pure horror.

So, Once Upon a Time in Scandinavian Trauma…

We meet Elvira, a teenager with poetry in her hands and a prince in her fantasies. She and her mum, Rebekka, move into a grand estate to marry into money, except the groom, known only as Papa, dies mid-dinner after doing the “do you want this cake?” trick and laughing at his own joke. The camera pans the table, and he keels over. Dead. Right there. Face in the dessert. No one buries him. They just kind of… keep him around.

Now Rebekka is stuck in a household with three girls: Elvira (hers), Alma (her younger daughter), and Agnes (Papa’s perfect blonde child from a previous marriage). Agnes is serene, disgustingly clean, and annoyingly unbothered. At first, she looks down on Elvira and Rebekka, until it becomes clear the family’s broke on all sides. There’s no money left, and the only path to survival is strategic marriage. Rebekka pivots like a Real Housewife with a prenup problem.

The Prince, the Obsession, the Penis

From the beginning, Elvira is obsessed with Prince Julian. She recites his poetry, dreams about him, even has a full-on forest meet-cute with him while he’s peeing, and yes, the camera gives us a close-up of the royal goods. Later, he sees her again (in her post-surgery veil) and says, “I would never f*ck that.” So… he’s a catch.

The kingdom then announces that “all eligible virgins” must attend the royal ball so Julian can choose a wife. A guy literally rides up and delivers this announcement like it’s a medieval casting call. Rebekka takes this as gospel and begins phase one of Elvira’s transformation.

Beauty is Pain: Enter the Chisel

The makeover is brutal. Braces off. Nose job, they literally choose “number 7” from a surgical chart and go at it with a chisel. Elvira’s nose is bandaged. Then comes eyelash implants, stitched in like horror-movie microblading.

A palace advisor sees Elvira and says she recognises the ambition, and gives her a tapeworm egg to ingest, sold as a miracle weight-loss fix.

“You’re changing your outside to match what’s inside,” she says. Iconic. Horrific. Accurate.

Off she goes to finishing school, where a dance teacher hosts etiquette drills like it’s Black Swan for beginners. Agnes is the favourite until Elvira catches her shagging the stable hand Isak in a barn. One narc moment later, Agnes is demoted to maid, and Rebekka focuses all her energy on Elvira.

Agnes quietly becomes Cinderella, cleaning, folding, mopping, and being weirdly fine with it. She visits Papa’s rotting corpse. Her dress is destroyed. Her agency is erased. And still, she’s calm. Peaceful. That serenity drives Elvira mad.

Alma bleeds, Rebekka Schemes, and Tension Builds

Meanwhile, Alma, the youngest, gets her period but tells no one. She’s the only person in the house with common sense. Everyone else is spiraling.

Rebekka is sleeping with whoever it takes to get Elvira an invitation to the ball. The finishing school is now in full Hunger Games mode. Girls wear flower-shaped hats and spin for the male gaze. A judge says they look like “budding blossoms,” which is disgusting, and probably true to life.

Elvira’s body starts to fail her. Her stomach growls (the worm is hungry). Her hair thins. Her transformation is no longer elegant, it’s desperate. Every time she sees Agnes being peaceful in her position, she pushes herself further into the void.

The Ball, the Breakdown, the Shoe

Elvira is chosen by the prince for the first dance. Success. Until Agnes arrives in disguise, veiled, ethereal, magnetic, and steals his attention. Instantly. Elvira knows she’s lost. However, in one creschenoing moment of equality between Elvira and Anges they see each other and her cover is blown.

She returns home to find the other shoe. The last chance Elvira has to win and take her into the arms of her Prince.

But her feet are too big.

Her solution? Chop off her toes.

Needing help, she screams out, and Alma and her mom come running. Alma is distraught, but Rebekka calmly informs her that her plan will not work. She has shortened the wrong foot.

Rebekka drugs her (again) and calmly finishes the job. The scene is a full-on gore ballet. The sounds alone, crunching, slicing, squishing, are enough to make you pause the film and reconsider your foot attachment.

Elvira is dressed and propped up like a doll for the prince’s arrival. But her body betrays her. She collapses on the stairs, tooth chipped, face bloodied, and crawls toward the sound of the fanfare. The worm in her gut is making noises now. It’s not subtle.

The Tapeworm Extraction Deserves Its Own Genre

Alma, ever the realist, steps in and makes her drink the antidote. What follows is one of the most revolting, unforgettable sequences in modern horror: the tapeworm exit.

It goes on forever. Then it goes on again. Just when you think it’s done — no. We are not done here.

The final moments are grim and brilliant. Agnes gets the prince. Elvira throws up her parasite. Rebekka is literally giving a guy head in the background. Crows start pecking the remains of the tape worms as they lie casually in the grass.

Alma and Elvira leave, together, crossing the border, bleeding and barely free, but free enough.

Final thoughts:

The Ugly Stepsister is rated

4.5 out of 5 bloody slippers

The Ugly Stepsister is a scream disguised as a fairytale. It’s camp, disgusting, hilarious, and incredibly sad. It’s a film about how far a girl will go to be loved, and what society tells her she must give up to deserve it. The cinematography is stunning, the sound design is feral, and the performances walk a fine line between tragedy and satire.

It doesn’t hold your hand. It doesn’t overexplain. It just peels away the layers, literally and metaphorically, and dares you to watch.

Reviewer Soundbites and Where to Watch The Ugly Stepsister

Love your horror with a side plate of identity confusion? Have you seen Companion? or Rita 2024

Cast

Lea Myren as Elvira
Ane Dahl Torp as Rebekka
Thea Sofie Loch Næss as Agnes
Flo Fagerli as Alma
Isac Calmroth as Prince Julian
Malte Gårdinger as Isak
Ralph Carlsson as Otto
Cecilia Forss as Sophie von Kronenberg
Katarzyna Herman as Madame Vanja
Adam Lundgren as Dr. Esthétique