The Ugly Stepsister · reception & legacy
2025 · Emilie Blichfeldt
How The Ugly Stepsister has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It detonated on night one of Sundance 2025's Midnight section — gasps, walkouts, and a reported vomiting incident — and rather than cooling off, it was almost instantly embraced as the year's breakout feminist body horror, riding the post-Substance wave onto Shudder and into horror-fan hearts.
What's debated
The recurring fight is whether it's a genuine original or 'the Norwegian Substance' — a knockoff riding Coralie Fargeat's coattails versus a film that arguably goes harder and cuts deeper than its comparison point.
Its footprint
It became instant shorthand for the women-led body-horror boom alongside The Substance, Titane, and Hatching, with its grisly literalisation of the Brothers Grimm detail everyone forgot — the stepsister mutilating her foot to fit the slipper — as its endlessly-screenshotted calling card.
Where it stands
An immediate Letterboxd horror darling and new-canon entry in feminist body horror — the 2025 Midnight title people dare each other to sit through.
Named by the director
Influences Emilie Blichfeldt has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973) — Blichfeldt cited the beloved Czech Cinderella classic as an inspiration for grounding the fairy tale in a real, tactile world.
- Beauty and the Beast (Panna a netvor) (1978) — She named Juraj Herz's gothic Czech fairy-tale film among the 1970s Eastern European fantasy movies that shaped the film's realistic-enchanted look.
- Crash (1996) — Blichfeldt specifically cited Cronenberg's flesh-and-metal psychodrama as an inspiration for her 'beauty horror.'
- David Cronenberg — She repeatedly named Cronenberg's body horror as a formative influence on the film's approach to the flesh.