The Ugly Stepsister Review (2025): A Fairy Tale That Turns Horrific

The Ugly Stepsister is what happens when a fairy tale stops pretending it’s about magic and beauty and instead turns into a slow, uncomfortable dissection of what it actually costs to chase both.

Simon Leasher

May 16

This is a body horror film that doesn’t care if you look away - disturbing, oddly beautiful, and emotionally exhausting that sticks with you, and by the end, you don’t feel clean watching it, you feel implicated.

And it’s also one of the more confident horror debuts I’ve seen in a while.

Plot

Elvira battles against her stepsister in a realm where beauty reigns supreme. She resorts to extreme measures to captivate the prince, amid a ruthless competition for physical perfection.

Good Points

Lea Myren delivers a haunting lead performance
The body horror is purposeful and sharp
Strong critique of beauty standards and cultural pressure
Visually striking with a “rotting fairy tale” aesthetic
Elvira’s arc is deeply unsettling and tragic
Mother character is one of the most uncomfortable villains
Silence and pacing is used effectively to build dread
Consistently tense, even in quiet scenes
Leaves a strong psychological aftertaste

Bad Points

Some scenes repeat emotional ideas a bit heavily
Occasional moments feel slightly heavy-handed with symbolism

This image is from the 2025 Norwegian body-horror film The Ugly Stepsister.

My Thoughts on The Ugly Stepsister

Elvira is the emotional centre of the entire film

Elvira doesn’t operate like a traditional horror protagonist here, because she doesn’t scream her way through scenes or turn her character into a symbolic final girl figure, you just watch as she just slowly unravels right in front of your eyes, and that’s what makes it all so incredibly uncomfortable to watch.

Lea Myren is really fantastic playing her, with a quiet stillness that still feels louder than everyone else in the film, and you’re constantly aware something is being broken inside her, even when nothing explicit is happening on screen - it’s not a performance built on dialogue, it’s built on erosion.

The mother is the real horror of the film

This is where the film really gets under your skin, because the mother, Rebekka, is recognisable in a way that makes everything feel that so much worse, as she speaks like someone who believes she’s doing the right thing, and someone who thinks love is conditional, shaped entirely around appearance, status, and control, which is what makes her so disturbing.

Every interaction of hers feels like pressure being applied rather than open cruelty, so there’s no need for shouting when approval itself becomes manipulation, and it is something that is hard to shake as you watch her.

The body horror actually has something to say

The body horror in this film also isn’t just there for shock value, because it’s directly tied to the film’s ideas about transformation, control, and self-erasure, where every physical change feels like an extension of psychological pressure - not random gore, but visual storytelling about identity being reshaped against someone’s will, with what feels like a real a purpose behind all the discomfort.

The visual style feels like a decaying fairy tale

The aesthetic is one of the strongest parts of the film, as everything looks like it used to be beautiful, but isn’t anymore - grand interiors, soft lighting, elegant spaces - all slightly off, slightly wrong, like they’ve been left to rot under makeup.

The colour palette leans cold and drained, which makes the world feel emotionally dead even before anything happens, and a fairy tale, but one that’s already been corrupted, so that visual consistency really carries the atmosphere through on top of everything else.

It’s slow, but not empty

The pacing will probably divide some people, because there are long stretches where not much “plot” happens, but that’s because the film is more interested in psychological pressure than narrative momentum, and it wants you to sit in scenes, and absorb them with the tension building silently in the background.

At times though it does feel like it’s holding on a bit too long, but it’s also never random - it’s always feels like it is doing something emotionally, even when it feels still.

What really defines The Ugly Stepsister though is how unapologetic it is - there’s no safety net, no moral relief, no neat transformation where everything becomes okay again - it just shows the damage, and then it sits with it, which makes it more honest than most stylised fairy tale retellings.

Final Verdict

Disturbing, slow-burning, visually beautiful in a decayed way, and emotionally exhausting in the best and worst sense of that phrase - The Ugly Stepsister is the kind of horror film that stays with you long after you’ve stopped watching, at least, it did for me.