Follows Elvira as she battles against her gorgeous stepsister in a realm where beauty reigns supreme. She resorts to extreme measures to captivate the prince, amidst a ruthless competition for physical perfection.
Apologies if this is not the community for a thread like this, I don’t frequent this community as much as I should (considering the volume of movies I watch lol). But I just saw The Ugly Stepsister in theaters and I’m dying to talk about it.
I’m curious if any of you have seen it yet. It’s still in theaters and looks like it’s going to be fairly niche, I’m sure in no small part due to it being foreign. I definitely recommend it, I found it to be a fun spin on the classic Cinderella story that we get from the likes of Disney and a lot more faithful to the source.
Definitely not for those who are squeamish, but to be honest I found the body horror to not be over the top (unlike The Terrifier 2 lol). The scenes that were there definitely further the story and help with characterization, showing the absolute abuse that Rebekka is willing to put her children through just for some money.
I really liked the juxtaposition between Agnes, with her “effortless beauty” and going after the Prince seemingly for spite, and Elvira, who we obviously see undergo massive treatment to ascertain “beauty” and wanting the Prince her whole life.
Curious to hear anyone else’s thoughts on it. I found it reminiscent of The Substance, both for the body horror and themes centering on physical beauty, as well as a LVT film with the dark and depressing feeling that it left me with 🤣
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It’s on my watch list, although I’ll probably end up waiting til it’s streaming to see it. Glad to hear it’s good!
( !horrormovies@lemm.ee and/or !horror@lemmy.world might appreciate this post, too.)
Okay, hopefully you didn’t read any spoilers in my post lol 💀 let me know what you think! Id be willing to bet it’s going to come to streaming soon (like maybe early May) because it seems pretty niche, and a limited theater release.
I’ll crosspost there, thank you for the suggestion:)
I finally got around to watching it (sorry it took so long!). I agree with your review pretty much in full, actually, and second that it’s not for the squeamish lol.
The whole thing was beautifully shot, including the horror bits, and the story was really good at getting you to sympathize with Elvira on her downward spiral, led astray and enabled by the adults.
Spoiler thoughts
Alma is the best character, imo, although I would have liked to see her be a more constant voice of reason and/or obvious alternate role model that Elvira is blind to, rather than just the savior at the end.
Re: Agnes: Initially, it sounded like Agnes only wanted to marry the prince so she’d have the money to bury her dad, but then the after-credits shot makes it clear that she never did. So at that point, why not steal anything of value and run off after her stable boy instead (apart from the story needing to match the fairy tale)? I think I agree with you that it must have been for spite, but I found her motivations kinda blurry.
Im glad you liked it!! Your point about Agnes is valid, I guess there’s also the argument that she was swept away by the royal life and left everything (including her father) behind? It’s been a while, so I’m fuzzy on some of the smaller details of the movie.
I think you’re right about Alma but its also a fine line between her being a voice of reason and it being too overwhelming. I think it probably could have had more of her perspective on the abuse Elvira was going through.
I really like this movie though, it’s been a few months since release and I still think its probably one of the better movies to have come out this year. But, I also think that these types of movies are the ones I enjoy the most: humanizing/contextualizing people situations that society has a preconceived notion towards. The only other example that I can think of is LVT’s Nymphomaniac, but that’s a tough one to recommend due to the extremely graphic content and the fact that its like six hours between both halves lol.
I hope this movie wins some awards, doesn’t need to be picture of the year or anything but I think it’s a standout amongst its competitors this year.