The Gruesome First Trailer for Sundance Shocker The Ugly Stepsister Is Finally Here
After a scintillating debut at the Sundance Film Festival that drew rave reviews, including our own, director Emilie Blichfeldt’s satirical feature film debut The Ugly Stepsister is headed for a run in U.S. theaters before it eventually makes its way to Shudder. It’s a fitting and well-deserved showcase for Blichfeldt’s stunningly attractive and simultaneously gross-as-hell fairytale reimagining of Cinderella, and having seen The Ugly Stepsister already, we can’t wait to see how rank-and-file audiences will react to some of its more gnarly sequences. It begins theatrical screenings on April 18, 2025.
The film, from IFC Films and horror streamer Shudder, deftly plays with audience sympathy and the “protagonist/antagonist” axis as it tells the story of Elvira (Lea Myren), one of the titular “ugly stepsisters” from the classical Cinderella story, as she moves with her mother into a new home, only to see things quickly fall apart after the death of her new stepfather. Competing against her beautiful new stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), Elvira pines for the affection of the country’s hunky prince, and resolves (with her mother’s urging) to become beautiful at any cost. And when we say “any cost,” we mean any cost. Audiences will see obvious allusion to other beauty-industry-as-horror-show parables such as The Substance and fellow recent Shudder release Grafted from director Sasha Rainbow.
The Ugly Stepsister stands out as a spectacular debut for for Blichfeldt and Lea Myren in particular, and is sure to push some audience buttons–first hand reports from Sundance involved audiences running for the exists and vomiting at screenings. We can say with no reservation that the film ends with one of the grossest sequences we’ve ever seen … but you’ll just have to experience it for yourself. Meanwhile, you can check out the trailer below, which only hints at the madness. Of note: The film is in Blichfeldt’s native Norwegian, something that the trailer skirts around by not having any dialogue, probably in an attempt to preserve the biggest possible audience of horror geeks. Regardless of language, though, this is a film that any genre geek should see in theaters if they can.
The Ugly Stepsister will presumably hit Shudder later in the year, but for now they’re unsurprisingly focused on its theatrical run.