One of the most depressing contemporary cinematic trends is the frequency with which studios have remade their animated classics into live-action features. Even ignoring the fact that these films are almost identical recreations, which make Gus Van Sant’s Psycho update look individualistic in comparison, they’ve eroded the edges from many fairy tales that could’ve been adapted in more creative ways. Beauty and the Beast, for example, is a story rife with sexual innuendo and class ascension, which inspired a surrealist romantic drama from Jean Cocteau back in 1946. However, a modern audience may find it impossible to distinguish the original Beaumont fairy tale from the colorful adventure of Disney’s animated classic, which was shamelessly rendered into an ugly live-action reboot in 2017.
When compared to other fairy tales woven into the cultural consciousness, Cinderella doesn’t offer much room for reinterpretation. The lack of substantial supporting characters and simplicity of the narrative allowed Walt Disney Studios to make the definitive version of the story with the 1950 animated classic; Kenneth Branagh’s 2015 remake was one of the better-received live-action Disney films because it had to change very little. An attempt to modernize a story that’s so intertwined with the social conservatism of the late-Renaissance era would be disastrous, which was proven by the offensive 2021 Cinderella musical directed by Kay Cannon. The most compelling way to make Cinderella worthy of a revisit is to change the perspective, which is why The Ugly Stepsister is such a clever work of exploitation.
If Disney’s attempted origin stories for Maleficent and Cruella have proven anything, it's that it’s dramatically regressive to apply a tragic backstory to villains; some characters work best as sources of evil, and lose their impact if burdened by a traumatic childhood. The Ugly Stepsister wisely chose to broaden the scope of the “Cinderella story” rather than flip it entirely. The young Cinderella (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), who’s known in the Norwegian translation as “Agnes,” has seen her late father Otto (Ralph Carlsson) married to the widow Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) with the hope of attaining a fortune.
Otto and Rebekka had the ambition of wealth, but were too narrow-minded to realize that their partner had only feigned status in the hope of being wed.
Agnes is blameless, but so are Rebekka’s children, Elvira (Lea Myren) and Alma (Flo Fagerli), who become their mother’s last shot to acquire any degree of affluence. The motivation of the traditional “Evil Stepmother” was always to marry her daughter to the prince to share the royal prosperity, but The Ugly Stepsister has the context of when the story was originally transcribed. Even if it's more attuned to the notion of class mobility, The Ugly Stepsister isn’t any kinder in its interpretation of Cinderella’s new relatives. Agnes is still seen by Rebekka as the scorn of a failed marriage, and is treated as a secondary servant while her daughters are prepared to court the young and dashing Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth).
Cinderella’s remembered as a victimized heroine because she’s able to retain her beauty and goodness (often coded as virginity), despite the abuse she’s suffered from her stepmother and stepsisters. The radical suggestion made by The Ugly Stepsister is that it may be less harrowing to be completely dismissed than it would be to carry the weight of familial projections; Agnes may be treated like a wild animal by Rebekka, but it’s Elvira who’s expected to attract the eye of the Prince. The cruel irony is that Elvira doesn’t have the natural charisma and adaptability of Agnes, and is forced to ensure grueling physical transformations for the sake of seeming attainable.
The Ugly Stepsister has more in common with the giallo films of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci than the “dark fantasy” subgenre. Elvira’s subjected to bodily torment to reach the degree of beauty desired by her mother; between the ingestion of a parasitic tapeworm, toes severed by a butter knife, and brutally amateur cosmetic surgeries, The Ugly Stepsister isn’t afraid to get repulsive. The absurd degree to which Elvira is meant to endure physical pain for the sake of her own attractiveness is transformed into a comedy-of-errors; as an immensely stressed adolescent girl in the midst of puberty, she can’t expect her body to conform to its bastardization.
As mean-spirited as The Ugly Stepsister is, writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt isn’t interested in the archetypes that have defined these characters. There’s a surprising degree of authenticity within the depiction of adolescent relationships, specifically in the ways that young women are forced into rivalries. Agnes may have inadvertently caused Elvira to be snubbed, but she’s fairly a buttoned-up princess; likewise, Agnes has endured so much bullying at the hands of her mother that she’s become ignorant of how hostile she’s treated both Agnes and Alma. The rare moments in which overt fantastical elements are incorporated into The Ugly Stepsister occur as a contorted version of magical realism, in which it’s easy to imagine the supernatural components stem from Elvira’s worldview. As a child born in poverty, the opulence of the prince’s wealth is just as surreal as a pumpkin transformed into a carriage.
The Ugly Stepsister is at its least interesting during its final third, where it can only add more gratuity to the components of the “Cinderella story,” including the royal ball and magic slipper. It’s during the earlier events in Elvira’s childhood where The Ugly Stepsister is able to transcend any loose inspirations and become a completely original series of gothic horror vignettes that only vaguely hint at the wondrous.