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The Ugly Stepsister by Norway’s Emilie Blichfeldt has won the top prize and audience award at the 29th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Busan) in South Korea.

The twisted take on the classic tale of Cinderella picked up the Best of Bucheon Award as well as the audience award at the closing ceremony of the festival today (July 11) at the Eoul Madang Hall in Bucheon City Hall.

The film premiered earlier this year as the Sundance Midnight opening selection and went on to play the Berlinale. Shudder has rights for North America, the UK and Anz. It marks the...

The grossest, goriest, and most gratuitous of the year are set to be feted at the 2025 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards.

The horror magazine has unveiled the nominees for its signature awards, which includes the big categories you'd expect — like Best Wide Release and Best Lead Performance — and some you mind not—like Best Video Game and Best Public Domain Resurrection.

The Chainsaw Awards are also among the first opportunities for this year's potential awards frontrunner, Sinners, to flex its muscles. (Metaphorical muscles. Michael B. Jordan's are currently streaming on HBO Max.) Ryan Coogler's period vampire thriller is in contention for Best Wide Release — where it will compete with 28 Years Later — and boasts a total of ten nominations in all.

With an eligibility window that ran from July 2024 to June 2025, the Chainsaw Awards also include some of last year's awards contenders, including The Substance, which tied Sinners for nominations.

Check...

Fangoria's 2025 Chainsaw Awards nominees have been revealed, and voting is now open! With voting taking place from July 9th - 20th, you'll have plenty of time to vote for your favorite nominees across categories you might expect from an entertainment awards show.... but where else are you going to be able to vote on your favorite creature FX, makeup FX, and public domain resurrection movie? You can vote now or learn more and check out the nominees list below:

[From the Press Release] Fangoria, the iconic horror magazine and genre authority, has announced the nominees for the 2025 Chainsaw Awards, recognizing standout achievements in horror across film, television, and gaming. Voting opens July 9 and runs through July 20 at fangoria.com/vote, putting the power in fans’ hands to crown the best in blood.

Ready to see who made the cut? The full list of the 2025 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards nominees awaits below. Scroll to the bottom...

The Academy Awards may not celebrate the horror genre all that often, but that’s why horror has its own awards celebrations. The biggest and best are the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, and the nominees for this year’s ceremony have been announced this morning. As always, the legendary horror magazine is putting the power in Your hands, with voting Open Now!

The Fangoria Chainsaw Awards 2025 will recognize standout achievements in horror across film, television, and gaming, and voting is open now through July 20 at fangoria.com/vote!

Fangoria previews, “Highlights from this year’s nominee slate include genre-defying films like The Substance and Sinners, standout lead performances by Willa Fitzgerald (Strange Darling) and Hunter Schafer (Cuckoo), and some highly anticipated sequels in the video game category like Death Stranding 2 and Silent Hill 2 Remake.

“Nominees were selected by a nominating body of over 150 industry tastemakers, creators, and professionals, drawing from the...

“Sinners” and “The Substance” lead the nominations for Fangoria’s 2025 Chainsaw Awards, which recognizes standout achievements in horror across film, television and gaming.

“This year we continue the new tradition of pitting the second half of last year with the first half of this year in a cage match of cinematic carnage,” Phil Nobile Jr., Fangoria Eic, said in a statement. “Like the Grammys, but gorier. It’s made for a rather chaotic list of nominees, and we expect the voting to be vicious and voluminous.”

“Sinners” and “The Substance” each earned 10 nominations, competing in the same categories for best wide release, best cinematography, best score, best director, best screenplay, best costume design, and best lead and supporting performances. Nominations also include “Strange Darling,” Cuckoo,” “The Ugly Stepsister,” 28 Years Later” and “Longlegs.” Other categories include best streaming premiere, best kill and best creature FX.

Nominees were chosen by a...

Emilie Blichfeldt’s “The Ugly Stepsister” is an unnerving, grisly twist on the Cinderella narrative. The age-old fable is spun into new registers of intense body horror. Its latent sexual enquiries are ferreted out, lurid and searching and scathing. Characters are flipped, the beautiful remain banished, and the unpleasant triumphant for long. Even when the tables are turned, it’s too late. It’s a bloody, disturbing rendition the film offers, with ample unease and provocation, not shying from the explicit and outrageous.

The director wants to interject familiar templates with vicious bursts of pure genre statement. It’s spiked with fearless gestures and an affinity for overt horror, capitalising on all the hidden impulses in the original text. In its new weave, beauty, its impossible standards exact a horrible, punishing price, far more severe than its aspirant could have ever imagined. Greed pushes her down an abyss of devastation.

There’s a new murderous clown up on the big screen plus an acclaimed Shudder release now streaming at home, and that’s just the beginning of this week’s seven fresh horror offerings.

Here’s all the new horror that released on Friday, May 9, 2025.

For daily reminders about new horror releases, be sure to follow @HorrorCalendar.

The young adult slasher novel by author Adam Cesare comes to the big screen in Clown in a Cornfield, and Rlje Films and Shudder have released the film in theaters today.

Eli Craig (Tucker & Dale vs. Evil) directed the movie adaptation.

Katie Douglas (Ginny & Georgia), Carson MacCormac (Shazam!), Aaron Abrams (Hannibal), Will Sasso (The Three Stooges), and Kevin Durand (Abigail) lead the cast.

In the bloody slasher movie, “Quinn and her father have just moved to the quiet town of Kettle Springs hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she discovers a fractured community...

Arriving this Friday on Shudder to test your stomach is The Ugly Stepsister, the feature directorial debut by Emilie Blichfeldt. The Ugly Stepsister retells the classic fairy tale of Cinderella from the perspective of her stepsister, Elvira (Lea Myren), who subjects herself to a variety of barbaric beauty procedures in the pursuit of a happy ever after (our review).

It’s a fairy tale with a gruesome body horror twist. This week’s streaming picks highlight other fairy tale-inspired horror movies, whether they’re direct adaptations or loosely based on them. All blend horror and fantasy to deliver cautionary bedtime tales of the bloody variety.

Here’s where you can stream these fairy tale inspired horror movies this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Absentia – Hoopla, Prime Video

When creating his eerie supernatural tale, writer/director Mike Flanagan drew inspiration from a few urban myths about tunnels and trolls,...

I was absolutely floored by The Ugly Stepsister when I caught it at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. When I heard it was a subversive take on Cinderella, I groaned, as this was at the height of Snow White’s terrible press run, and I didn’t really need to see yet another fairy tale told over again – especially as there was a pretty solid retelling done back in the nineties with Drew Barrymore, Ever After, which doesn’t get much love. Suffice to say, I had no clue what I was getting into, with this a gory, body horror version that puts the Grimm back into this Brothers Grimm story. It’s the darkest fairy tale movie I’ve seen since The Company of Wolves or Snow White: A Tale of Terror.

Taking the perspective of one of the “ugly stepsisters”, director Emilie Blichfeldt has made a gruesome,...

After arriving in theaters earlier this month from IFC Films and Shudder, Norwegian body horror movie The Ugly Stepsister is now making its way home courtesy of Shudder.

A twisted take on the tale of Cinderella, writer and director Emilie Blichfeldt’s critically acclaimed horror movie The Ugly Stepsister debuts on Shudder on May 9, 2025.

Shudder previews, “A biting satire and cinematically exhilarating directorial debut, The Ugly Stepsister is a timely examination of body image and beauty standards, identifying Emilie Blichfeldt as one of the most exciting new international filmmaking voices.”

The Ugly Stepsister follows Elvira (Lea Myren) as she prepares to earn the prince’s affection at any cost. In a kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will compete with the beautiful and enchanting Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) to become the belle of the ball.

The Ugly Stepsister marks the feature debut from Norwegian writer and director Emilie Blichfeldt,...

Stars: Lea Myren, Ane Dahl Torp, Thea Sofie Loch Næss, Flo Fagerli, Isac Calmroth, Malte Gårdinger, Ralph Carlsson | Written and Directed by Emilie Blichfeldt

Making her feature debut, Norwegian writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt serves up this body horror version of the Cinderella story, presented from the perspective of the titular ugly stepsibling. As such, it’s an inspired twist, taking a razor-sharp scalpel to impossible beauty standards and delivering buckets of vomit-worthy gore moments.

Set in a Scandinavian fairy-tale land, The Ugly Stepsister‘s story centres on plump, unattractive Elvira (Lea Myren), who arrives at the mansion owned by her mother’s new husband, only for him to immediately drop dead during their first family meal together. With her mother, Rebekka (Agnieszka Zulewska), now in charge, the stepfather’s beautiful daughter Agnes (the splendidly named Thea Sofie Loch Næss), is quickly reduced to the status of general servant and nicknamed Cinderella.

The Ugly Stepsister is a retelling of the classic Cinderella tale with a horror twist. Directed by Emilie Blichfeldt and starring Lea Myren, Thea Sofie Loch Næss, Ane Dahl Torp, and Flo Fagerli, this Norwegian film uses the fairy tale as a vehicle to examine themes of self-esteem, harmful beauty standards, and girlhood. The 2025 release also joins the ranks of recent body horror pictures like The Substance and Grafted.

The film follows Elvira (Lea Myren) and Alma (Flo Fagerli) as their mother, Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), tries to secure a good life for her family by way of Agnes/Cinderella’s (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) father. The eldest stepsister, Elvira, is not only infatuated with the Prince, but is then invited to the ball where he will choose his wife. Under her mothers guidance, she undergoes a rigorous beautification process to compete against the other girls, and especially Agnes, for the Prince’s hand.

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If you are a horror fan, then there is a big chance that you might have heard about the horror streaming service Shudder, and if you have its subscription, you might be wondering what’s in store for you in May 2025. Don’t worry. There is a host of new and old horror movies coming to the service in the upcoming month, and we have listed the 11 best movies coming to Shudder in May 2025.

Overlord (May 1)

Overlord is an alternate history action horror film directed by Julius Avery from a screenplay co-written by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith. The 2018 film is set in an alternate 1940s, towards the end of World War II, and it revolves around a group of American paratroopers on a mission to destroy a German radio tower. They soon find themselves in a...

With the surprise crossover success of Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes body-horror hit The Substance last year, there was a lot of blather about how the Academy was finally ready to cozy up to genre films. Now, as if to test that thesis, up pops this extraordinary film from Norway, an extreme fairytale that premiered at Sundance and explores similar themes of female desire and self-esteem but pushes things so much, much further with the odd (really) graphic sex scene and squeamish depictions of body modification. Emilie Blichfeldt’s dark, funny, provocative film could easily lose a few of these 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.

As the title suggests,...

Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt upends audience expectations in a feature debut that’s hyper-aware of the origin story’s sexual and patriarchal imagery

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. In one scene, there could even be a nod to Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Cynical widow Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) remarries a well-heeled widower somewhere in 18th-century central Europe; he then makes her a widow for the second time by fatally gorging on cake at the wedding breakfast. As a result, Rebekka is left financially embarrassed with her plain daughter Elvira (Lea Myren), Elvira’s kid sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) and a new stepdaughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), a beautiful young woman who haughtily resents the ugly Elvira.

Who doesn’t love a new twist on an old tale? Well, if you’ve got a soft stomach, prepare yourself for “The Ugly Stepsister,” a twisted tale indeed, that reimagines the Cinderella story as a body-horror costume drama. From filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt, the film follows Elvira (Lea Myren), a young woman determined to make herself beautiful enough to win the prince’s hand, no matter the bloody, bone-crunching cost, after the death of her step-father’s sudden death puts her family’s life of luxury at risk. There’s just one problem: she has to compete with her gorgeous stepsister, Agnes.

Revisionist fairy tales are a proud tradition and always an exciting opportunity to examine the old yarns that have become touchpoints in our social constructs, and “The Ugly Stepsister” promises to take a scalpel to beauty standards in its cheeky re-telling. The film is finally available for audiences...

David Cronenberg is back with his latest Cannes Film Festival premiere The Shrouds, a blend of body horror, grief, comedy, sex, high-tech graveyards and international intrigue starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger (in three roles), Guy Pearce and Sandrine Holt. Sideshow/Janus Films is opening the film – the first English-language foray by the distributor of Drive My Car and Flow — at three theaters: NYC’s Angelika Film Center and Film at Lincoln Center, and Los Angeles’ AMC Grove.

Cronenberg will be in-person with screenings hosted by Brady Corbet and Richard Kelly, with the iconic director traveling to San Francisco and Chicago later in the week ahead of a move to 250-plus screens, Sideshow’s widest expansion this early in a film’s run.

The director of The Fly, Dead Ringers and Videodrome has “long been one of my favorite filmmakers. It’s his most personal film. I loved it when I...

In a world filled with remakes, reboots, and sequels, fairy tales aren't exempt, either. While Disney recently released the controversial Snow White, Shudder has just taken things further with a dark reimagining of Snow White.

In recent years, many beloved fairy tales or famous children's stories have been turned into horrors or slashers, like the famous The Twisted Childhood Universe, which features Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Pan, and more. Regular Disney fairy tales, which are originally based on the grim stories by the Grimm Brothers, are turned into new horrors. A new body horror reimagining of Cinderella, titled The Ugly Stepsister, has just premiered in theaters, and it comes with near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score from the critics — 96%.

The Ugly Stepsister is a Norwegian body horror film, written and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt in her directorial debut. It stars Lea Myren, Thea Sofie Loch Næss, Ane Dahl Torp, and Flo Fagerl. The body...

My favorite film from this year's Overlook Film Festival was easily The Ugly Stepsister, from writer / director Emilie Blichfeldt, which not only delivers some incredible practical body horror, but also a powerful message on body image. Having just opened today in theaters from IFC and Shudder, I had the opportunity to catch up with Emilie Blichfeldt to discuss horror inspirations, casting the perfect Elvira, creating those practical effects on set, and more:

The Ugly Stepsister has been delighting and grossing out audiences during its festival run. What are some of your filmmaking influences that shaped your approach to The Ugly Stepsister?

Emilie Blichfeldt: I didn't start watching movies until I was 13 because I grew up in Northern Norway, where there are no people and no Blockbuster. My parents didn't believe in movies. They believed in books, so I was 13 when me and my siblings begged to get a VHS player...

Lea Myren as Elvira in The Ugly Stepsister. Photo credit: Lukasz Bak. Courtesy of IFC Films / Vertigo Releasing

In a dark, twisted re-telling of Cinderella, Norwegian director Blichfeldt’s satiric The Ugly Stepsister turns things around to tell the story from the view point of a stepsister. This Polish-shot period-film version of the classic fairy tale is a darkly comic body-horror film, which is more Brothers Grimm than either Disney or the familiar Charles Perrault fairy tale. Cinderella is a folk story that appears in various forms in numerous cultures around the world but this version turns much of our expectations on their heads. The retelling in The Ugly Stepsister puts a darkly comic twist on it by focusing on the stepsister, making it more a commentary on standards for beauty, and the price that might be paid to achieve it. Rather than romantic fantasy, The Ugly Stepsister takes a...

Folk tales of Cinderella have been told for centuries across the globe, but the Brothers Grimm version of the story emerged as one of the most popular for its particularly violent rendition of “The Little Ash Girl.” Norwegian writer and director Emilie Blichfeldt uses this read of the classic fairy tale figure as the foundation for The Ugly Stepsister, a gruesome and violent new spin on classic lore. Instead of whimsical romance set in the Renaissance, Blichfeldt gets graphic with the medieval torture women endure in their pursuit of happily ever after.

In Blichfeldt’s version, the little ash girl is Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), a fiercely independent young woman with ambition and an astute awareness of how the world really works. Yet Agnes remains on the periphery of the story that’s framed from the perspective of her naïve new stepsister and romantic rival, Elvira (Lea Myren). Elvira...

The pursuit of happily ever after in writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt‘s feature debut, The Ugly Stepsister, comes with pain, bloodshed, and body horror. Our exclusive clip from the horror satire teases barbaric beauty procedures that the title character undergoes in the name of love.

Beware: the clip may induce ommetaphobia over the ocular trauma it sets up.

The darkly entertaining and stomach-churning horror fairy tale releases in theaters on April 18, 2025.

The Ugly Stepsister follows “Elvira (Lea Myren) as she prepares to earn the prince’s affection at any cost. In a kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will compete with the beautiful and enchanting Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) to become the belle of the ball.”

Ane Dahl Torp also stars.

Watch the clip below that sees Elvira in the chair for a downright medieval lash extension procedure, one without much in the way of anesthesia. It’s...

The first volume of fairy tales that the Brothers Grimm penned together was completely ill-suited for children. Apart from containing overt sexual elements (along with themes of abuse and incest), some stories, like “Hans Dumm,” framed an act of sexual assault as a ghastly wish-fulfillment trope. Thankfully, “Hans Dumm” was removed in its entirety in later editions, which were also heavily sanitized until they morphed into the child-friendly versions we’re currently familiar with. However, these stories still carry vestiges of these age-inappropriate themes, embedded into the heart of characters who turn to some form of violence to express human folly.

“Cinderella” is no different, as it essentially equates beauty with goodness of heart, while contextualizing the absence of (traditional) beauty in the stepsisters by casting them in a morally reprehensible mold. The original Grimm folio of “Cinderella” takes this sentiment further by making the evil stepsisters cut off their...

The Ugly Stepsister Photo: Lukasz Bak, courtesy of IFC Films

Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt's feature debut, The Ugly Stepsister (Den Stygge Stesøsteren), reimagines the Cinderella story with a satirical bite and a violently dark and potentially nauseating twist. Set in a kingdom built upon superficial beauty, the story follows Elvira's (Lea Myren) attempts to earn the prince's affection. To do so, she will have to compete with the more beautiful Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss).

The Ugly Stepsister Photo: Lukasz Bak, courtesy of IFC Films

The Ugly Stepsister's central themes are a continuation of those explored previously by Blichfeldt's in her 2013 shirt film, How Do You Like My Hair? And 2018's Sara's Intimate Confession (Saras Intime Betroelser). The latter in particular shows the director's humorous wit, conjuring up a conversation with a talkative vulva.

In conversation with Eye For Film, Blichfeldt discussed the revelatory impact of discovering David Cronenberg's cinema,...

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 Sundance coverage. The Ugly Stepsister opens in theaters on April 18.

If the disheartening lack of creativity in Disney’s live-action remakes leaves one thinking these timeless stories have, in fact, run their course, leave it to Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt to find new life (and blood) with the Cinderella tale. Her impressively mounted, darkly macabre first feature follows Elvira living in the shadow of her stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess) as they vie for the attention of the Prince (Isac Calmroth). A twisted body horror take on the classic tale for how it explores the costs of beauty, The Ugly Stepsister is not afraid to dive into the unflinchingly gruesome while packing an impressive sense of empathy.

Drawing from the Brothers Grimm incarnation (a darker approach complete with self-mutilation) Blichfeldt sets her debut apart from the recent cash-grab horror...

Plot: Elvira (Lea Myren) has one all-consuming obsession: to win the affection of her kingdom’s handsome prince and live happily ever after. Yet, she lives in the shadow of her beautiful step-sister, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), who seems fated for the happy ending she’s always dreamed of. But, in a kingdom where beauty is prized above all things, Elvira will get what she wants, no matter what…

Review: The Ugly Stepsister is the gruesome, body horror Cinderella reimagining you never knew you wanted. Given the many variations on the classic tale, it’s incredible to think that we’ve never gotten a hard-r-rated flick in the vein of The Brothers Grimm’s version of the story. Let’s not forget that the take on Cinderella ends with the evil stepsisters mutilating their feet to fit into Cinderella’s slipper. Director Emilie Blichfeldt conjures up a version that...

Terrifier 2. Julia Ducornau’s Raw. Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister. What do these films have in common? They will go down in history as the movies so gruesome that they caused audiences to vomit during their theatrical screenings. After making an audience member at its Sundance Film Festival premiere throw up, The Ugly Stepsister is making its way to US theaters, and while it’s satisfyingly gnarly, the narrative does leave something to be desired.

The Ugly Stepsister Review

Offering a dark twist on the story of Cinderella, The Ugly Stepsister follows a young woman as she goes to extreme measures to earn the attention of the handsome prince. It’s a story that has been told on screen dozens if not hundreds of times, although the extreme nature of Blinchfeldt’s approach ensures that it doesn’t feel entirely generic.

However, The Ugly Stepsister is hardly the...

Editor’s note: This review was originally published during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. “The Ugly Stepsister” opens in theaters Friday, April 18.

It’s tough times out there for a feminist body horror fairy tale in a newly post-“Substance” filmmaking world. Coralie Fargeat’s gory parable of the abyss of self-loathing at the center of women’s society-stoked quest for beauty upped the stakes in terms of the genre’s potential cultural reach.

But female genre directors have been responding to impossible, often body-contorting standards of beauty for decades. Enter Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt, who makes her gruesome entrée into that movement with her playfully grotesque feature debut “The Ugly Stepsister.” One character’s name being Sophie von Kronenberg in this stylized gothic retelling of the Grimm Brothers’ spin on Cinderella should offer enough portent for where the film is heading in all its nose-breaking, flesh-eating, tapeworm-infested grandeur.

“The Ugly Stepsister...

Cinderella gets a gruesome horror twist in The Ugly Stepsister, the feature debut by writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt. IFC Films and Shudder has released a massive batch of new images from the Cinderalla horror movie that highlight the film’s lavish sense of fairy tale style.

The darkly entertaining fairy tale horror film will release in theaters on April 18, 2025.

The Ugly Stepsister follows “Elvira (Lea Myren) as she prepares to earn the prince’s affection at any cost. In a kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will compete with the beautiful and enchanting Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) to become the belle of the ball.”

While the horror fairy tale has made headlines after making one person vomit at the premiere, the new images showcase the film’s visual style and stunning production design. Most of all, it highlights the work costume design by Manon Rasmussen. The press release...

Last year's surprise horror hit was "The Substance," Coralie Fargeat's brilliant, bloody body horror deconstruction of Hollywood's relationship with aging and beauty standards. The Oscar-winning film helped skyrocket Demi Moore into her first Academy Awards nomination over 40 years after first breaking into the industry, along the way showing mainstream moviegoers there's a hell of a lot of beauty to be found in cinema for real sickos. As poignant as it was popular, "The Substance" sharply subverted what it means to be "beautiful" and what self-love can look like, but it was also graphic, goopy, and gross enough that audiences were said to be vomiting during their screenings. Many feared that "The Substance" was a fluke, an indie horror Cinderella story of a film scorned by a major studio and picked up by a smaller, art-house distributor to become the belle of the ball. Fortunately, for those craving more stories like the aforementioned grotesquerie,...

The world of fairy tales has always harboured a sinister streak just beneath its polished surface, but a new Norwegian horror film is about to rip the corset clean off. The Ugly Stepsister, written and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt, is poised to redefine the term “fairy tale nightmare” when it arrives in UK cinemas on 25th April, following its US release a week earlier on the 18th.

Billed as Bridgerton meets The Substance, the film has already stirred feverish buzz following a successful festival run, where critics have praised its gruesome reinvention of the Cinderella mythos. At the centre is Elvira, played by Lea Myren, a woman consumed by a desperate longing for beauty and status. But in this world, glass slippers come with razor edges, and happily ever after might just be paid for in flesh.

Set in a kingdom obsessed with appearance, Elvira finds herself living under the shadow of her radiant stepsister,...

The Ugly Stepsister, the first horror feature from Emilie Blichfeldt, is set to arrive in theaters on April 18, and the film just got an exciting new look. Collider is thrilled to partner with distributors IFC Films and Shudder to help promote its upcoming premiere by releasing a new poster for the film showing what appears to be a ballet shoe dipped in blood stepping carefully onto the carpet. The upcoming film will see Blichfeldt make her directorial debut after starring in other projects such as Nr. 24 (Sjur Vatne Brean) and Kruppel 16 (Johannes Blumenthal). The Ugly Stepsister is billed as a gorgeously crafted, twisted take on the classic Cinderella story, and it earned strong reviews out of Sundance earlier this year, including from Collider’s own Therese Lacson, who scored the film an 8/10 in her review.

The Ugly Stepsister follows Elvira (Lea Myren) as she prepares to earn the prince...

The Ugly Stepsister takes fairy tales to a whole new level of horror. This film is set to redefine horror reimaginings of classic stories. This Norwegian horror film offers a disturbing reimagining of Cinderella, exploring the nightmarish extremes of 19th-century beauty standards. With no anesthesia and questionable results, plastic surgery in this era was truly horrifying, and this film does not shy away from its gruesome reality. Last year, we saw two horror adaptations of Cinderella—Cinderella’s Revenge and Cinderella’s Curse—both of which reimagined Cinderella as the killer. Now, it’s her stepsister’s turn to take the spotlight in this gruesome tale. A Chilling Directorial Debut Marking the feature film debut of writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt, known for her work in short films, The Ugly Stepsister is a bold and grotesque addition to the body horror genre. The film stars Lea Myren as Elvira, the titular stepsister,...

A trailer for the upcoming sinister fairy tale horror film “The Ugly Stepsister” has made its way to us as the new pic is gearing up for an exciting April 18 launch in theaters.

Lea Myren, Thea Sofie Loch Næss, and Ane Dahl Torp star in lead roles for the satirical body horror film that hails from writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt and is the feature film debut of the promising filmmaker.

Continue reading ‘The Ugly Stepsister’ Trailer: Sinister Sundance Fairy Tale Horror Pic Opens April 18 Via Shudder at The Playlist.

"Vicious. Unrelenting. Horrifying. Intense." Shudder + IFC Films have revealed the official US trailer for a freaky new body horror from Norway titled The Ugly Stepsister, marking the feature directorial debut of genre filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt. This first premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival a few months ago and was heralded as one of the big horror hits of the festival, stirring up audiences (and even causing one person to puke during a screening). Arriving in US theaters to watch this April - they're banking on it being a big theatrical hit just like The Substance (the trailer is very similar to that) and it might just catch on. Determined to outshine her beautiful stepsister, Elvira resorts to extreme measures to win the prince's heart in this dark re-imagining of the Cinderella fairy tale. More praise: "A biting satire and cinematically exhilarating directorial debut, The Ugly Stepsister is a timely examination...

The official trailer for the upcoming Cinderella-inspired horror comedy The Ugly Stepsisteris out! Starring Lea Myren, Thea Sofie Loch Næss, Flo Fagerli, and Ane Dahl Torp in prominent roles, the film is a dark retelling of the classic fairytale. The Ugly Stepsister follows Elivira, played by Myren as she competes with her stepsister for a prince’s attention. The trailer offers a glimpse at how far Elvira goes to outshine everyone else in a world where beauty is everything.

The Ugly Stepsister gets its first trailer, previewing the twisted new take on Cinderella with a glowing score on Rotten Tomatoes. Directed by Emilie Blichfeldt, the upcoming body horror film follows Lea Myren's Elvira, a young woman who begins to take drastic measures to alter her appearance as she competes against her beautiful stepsister in a realm where looks are everything. Despite making an audience member vomit at its Sundance premiere earlier this year due to a few extremely graphic scenes, The Ugly Stepsister reviews have been generally glowing from critics.

Ahead of the film's theatrical release on April 18, Shudder now releases the full trailer for The Ugly Stepsister, providing a new look at some of the movie's stomach-turning body horror sequences. The trailer features a new look at the movie's depiction of a brutal rhinoplasty procedure, as well as another sequence in which a character has new eyelashes sewn in.

If you are looking for a bit more bite in your fairy tale adaptations, a few weeks after Disney’s Snow White sputters to theaters, the Sundance and Berlinale selection The Ugly Stepsister is here to provide quite a jolt. Emilie Blichfeldt’s bloody, twisted new take on Cinderella will arrive in U.S. theaters on April 18 (and U.K. theaters a week later) and now the first trailer has arrived from IFC Films and Shudder.

Here’s the synopsis: “A sinister twist on the classic Cinderella story, The Ugly Stepsister follows Elvira (Lea Myren) as she prepares to earn the prince’s affection at any cost. In a kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will compete with the beautiful and enchanting Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) to become the belle of the ball.”

I said in my Sundance review, “If the disheartening lack of creativity in Disney...

A twisted take on the tale of Cinderella, the upcoming Norwegian body horror movie The Ugly Stepsister isn’t like other recent movies that have been putting a horror movie spin on family-friendly properties. The darkly entertaining fairy tale from Norwegian writer and director Emilie Blichfeldt is critically acclaimed, for starters, and it even made someone vomit already!

Fresh off the film’s premiere at Sundance, where it indeed made headlines after making one person in the audience vomit, the film is being released in theaters from IFC Films and Shudder on April 18, 2025. Watch the official trailer for The Ugly Stepsister below.

A sinister twist on the classic Cinderella story, The Ugly Stepsister follows Elvira (Lea Myren) as she prepares to earn the prince’s affection at any cost.

In a kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will compete with the beautiful and enchanting Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss...

A lot of children’s stories and fairy tales are getting the horror treatment these days – but fairy tale-inspired horror comedy that we’re hearing some very positive buzz about is director Emilie Blichfeldt’s feature debut The Ugly Stepsister. In fact, after seeing the film at the Sundance Film Festival, JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray gave it an 8/10 review that you can read at This Link. We don’t know when the film is going to receive a wider release in North America (it will be in UK cinemas as of April 25), but a trailer has made its way online and can be seen in the embed above.

The Ugly Stepsister is said to be a gory, daring, and unexpected take on the world-famous tale, seen through the eyes of Cinderella’s stepsister, Elvira. The story follows Elvira as she battles to compete with her insanely beautiful stepsister in...

Paradise City Sales (rebranded from Memento International) has closed more deals for “The Ugly Stepsister,” Emilie Blichfeldt’s Cinderella-inspired horror film that premiered at Sundance and turned out to be one of the festival’s buzziest titles.

Previously acquired in a raft of territories, including North America, the U.K. and Australia/New Zealand with Shudder, “The Ugly Stepsister” was acquired for Benelux and Turkey (Mubi),

Italy (I Wonder Pictures), Greece (The Film Group), Ex- Yugoslavia (Discovery Films), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Bionaut / Zero Gravity), Ukraine (Svoekino), Bulgaria (Beta Film), South Korea (Happy Song),

Taiwan (Filmware International), Singapore (Shaw Organisation), Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos (Est N8) and Africa (What the Hero Wants). Paradise City Sales, whose team is led by Alexandre Moreau, is in negotiations to close the Middle East and India.

“The Ugly Stepsister” follows Elvira as she prepares to earn the prince’s affection at any cost.

The Cinderella-inspired horror movie The Ugly Stepsister (Den stygge stesøsteren)officially sets its 2025 release date. The film, written and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt, is a dark and twisted take on the fairy tale, following Elvira (Lea Myren), a young woman desperate to earn the prince’s affection. In the 19th-century kingdom where beauty is paramount, Elvira undergoes intense surgery to compete against the enchanting Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss). Featuring grotesque body horror, decomposing corpses, and a satirical critique of the beauty industry, the Norwegian-language film is reminiscent of other notable boundary-pushing horror films like The Substance.

According to Fangoria, The Ugly Stepsister has received an official release date of April 18, when it will hit theaters nationwide via IFC Films and Shudder. The indie film first made headlines after its premiere at Sundance earlier this year, where its unrelenting gore—from someone eating a live tapeworm to the primitive surgery...

There are multiple exciting horror movies still to come this March, but April is also starting to look like another fantastic month for the genre with films like Drop already receiving praise and an official theatrical release date for the fairytale body horror movie The Ugly Stepsister.

1428 Elm has learned The Ugly Stepsister will begin playing in select theaters on April 18. Marking the directorial debut of writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt, The Ugly Stepsister premiered at this year's Sundance Festival and apparently included some scenes so disturbing, someone vomited during the screening.

What made them get sick? Well, The Ugly Stepsister is a horror take on the classic tale of Cinderella. The lead character, Elvira (Lea Myren), is determined to win the prince's favor and she'll do anything to do it, including undergoing some truly brutal cosmetic procedures. Among them include a rough rhinoplasty, a scene where the protagonist eats a tapeworm,...

Fresh off the film’s premiere at Sundance, where it made headlines after making one person in the audience vomit, the Norwegian body horror movie The Ugly Stepsister now has a release date from IFC Films and Shudder. The darkly entertaining fairy tale horror film from Norwegian writer and director Emilie Blichfeldt will release in theaters on April 18, 2025.

A sinister twist on the classic Cinderella story, The Ugly Stepsister follows Elvira (Lea Myren) as she prepares to earn the prince’s affection at any cost.

In a kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will compete with the beautiful and enchanting Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) to become the belle of the ball.

The Ugly Stepsister marks the feature debut from Norwegian writer and director Emilie Blichfeldt, and stars Lea Myren and Thea Sofie Loch Næss alongside Ane Dahl Torp.

“The Ugly Stepsister turns a classic fairytale inside out...

“Cinderella” meets Cronenberg in writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister, which locates new potency in an enduring folk tale through a simple shifting of perspective, namely to that of the titular stepsister. This Scandinavian reconfiguring of “Cinderella” isn’t interested in reclaiming or rehabilitating this archetype. Instead, Blichfeldt just wants to recognize the character in all her humanity and hubris.

Elvira (Lea Myren) is no gargoyle; she’s just gawky in the way that any teenager would be. However, her family’s finances make it such that she needs to will her fantasy of marrying a prince into reality. To increase Elvira’s marriage odds over those of her angelic, blond stepdaughter, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), the newly widowed matriarch Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) insists upon an overhaul of her biological daughter’s physical features.

The Ugly Stepsister locates the origins of contemporary beauty culture in centuries-old practices.

Feminist body horror is taking over indie cinema.

The female filmmakers behind this new wave of flesh and flash are finding critical and commercial success by combining the viscerally grotesque with progressive themes exploring bodily autonomy, beauty standards, and social expectations for women.

Coralie Fargeat’s indie blockbuster The Substance — which has earned $77 million worldwide and picked up 5 Oscar nominations — is the current queen of female body horror, but gross-out feminist films are everywhere. Sundance’s Midnight screenings this year included Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister — a twisted take on the Cinderella story involving bone-crunching cosmetic surgery and bodily mutilation — and Grace Glowicki’s Dead Lover, a horror comedy about a gravedigger (Glowicki) who goes to macabre lengths in an attempt to re-animate her deceased mate.

Berlin’s lineup features Johanna Moder’s Mother’s Baby, a German-language psychological horror movie about a woman unsure if the baby she’s...

There’s a startlingly disturbing moment in Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt’s brilliantly inverted fairy/folk tale, The Ugly Stepsister (orig. Den stygge stesøsteren), where the unfortunate title character, Elvira (Lea Myren), the dutiful daughter of a penniless social climber, undergoes an 18th century version of a rhinoplasty (nasal reconstruction) without an anesthetic of any kind. As the aptly named Dr. Esthétique (Adam Lundgren), a sadistic surgeon, takes hammer and wedge to Elvira’s presumably imperfect nose, each tap echoes loudly on the soundtrack, followed by Elvira’s sharp cry of physical pain, emotional agony, and mental anguish. Following the familiar parameters of narrative cinema, the audience and Elvira, however briefly, are united in her tortured experience. Facing her mother Rebekka's (Ane Dahl Torp) impossible expectations, Elvira will go...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

“The Ugly Stepsister” — the Cinderella-inspired horror that emerged from Sundance as one of the festival’s buzziest titles — has sold worldwide for Memento International.

From director Emilie Blichfeldt and a beauty-horror reimagining of the classic fairy tale — the film already sold to Shudder for North America, the U.K. and Australia-New Zealand before it’s world premiere in Park City, while Mer Film and Scanbox will release it in Scandinavia.

The film has also now sold to Esc FIlms (France), Capelight (Germany and Austria), Beta Films (Spain), Lev Cinema (Israel), Ads (Hungary), Cay Films (Romania), Cine Canibal (Latin America), New Select (Japan), House of M (Thailand), Pt Falcon (Indonesia), Estin Film (Baltics) and Vendetta Filmes (Portugal). Negotiations are reportedly ongoing in Italy, Greece and Ukraine, among others.

“The Ugly Stepsister” follows Elvira as she prepares to earn the prince’s affection at any cost. In a kingdom where beauty is a brutal business,...

The Ugly Stepsister, Blichtfeldt’s debut feature — which premiered at Sundance and will screen in the Panorama section at the Berlinale — reframes the classic fairy tale through the Pov of Cinderella’s sibling and her horrifying quest to achieve the beauty she sees as required for love and acceptance.

Taking equal parts inspiration from the Brothers Grimm — whose version of Cinderella includes the stepsisters mutilating their feet to fit the famed slipper and fool the prince — and from the visceral gore of David Cronenberg, Blichtfeldt’s film is a further addition to a new wave of feminist body horror and would make a nice double bill with Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. In place of the high-tech, Ozymepic-esque injections Demi Moore subjects herself to in Fargeat’s film, we have a low-tech parasite, in the form of a tapeworm egg which the stepsister Elvira (Lea Myren) swallows to make her thin.

Because I will be covering the 2025 Sundance Film Festival entirely from snowy, frozen Chicago instead of snowy, frozen Park City, my screening options are limited. Only a select few films opted in to the festival’s online offerings this year, which means The A.V. Club won’t be getting a...