The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
Premise: On one hand we’ve got this no-longer-rich noble dude and his beautiful but kinda asshole-ish dorter. On the other hand, this apparently struggling with finances but rich looking noble lady (and by “rich looking” I mean “an absolute jerk”), and her two dorters. There’s a marriage, then there’s a death in the family, then there’s going to be a ball and one of the dorters is treated as a servant, and also there’s a lot of very primitive and painful looking cosmetic surgery involved. And the couple of times you see the Prince by the first half of the movie you are SURE that dude’s into some really creepy shit. Anyhoo.
Yes, as you might have guessed this is a retelling of Cinderella, a little known tale by the Super Grimm Bros, except this time the main character is one of the stepsisters and also we’re dealing with body horror themes a bit more openly. If you didn’t guess, well, that’s what the movie is about: how the titular ugly stepsister (who is of course played by an actual model) struggles to become purdy and also how things don’t go too well for her in general. Also she has to wear this really really uncomfortable looking thing on her nose for like more than a third of the movie, and that’s not the worst thing she does to herself. Ouch.
Under 90 minutes? Nope, almost twenty minutes over the golden mark.
Do they say the title? Nah, and not for a lack of opportunities!
One sentence review: the astonishing tale of the human punching bag and the kingdom that hated her.
Okay, more: Well, I’m afraid in this case I kinda expected stuff to be a bit more uhm, gory/horrific. Mind you, it gets really disturbing at times and boy am I glad I live in a time where there’s anesthesia around - but still. Maybe I expected the movie to go a few steps further than it does, maybe I just hyped myself. A lot of people online are bringing up The Substance and to be honest I’d say the comparison (other than some very very surface level reading of the themes) is only accurate if you remember the whole My First Body Horror Movie by Playskool. Mind you, it was fun, it got disgusting at times, I just think I expected more.
A simple way to improve it: The main character’s name is Elvira and imagine how different this whole movie would be if she was played by one of Impeccable Taste’s muses, Cassandra Peterson aka the Mistress of the Dark. If you want we don’t have to fire this movie’s Elvira, they could team up and go on adventures, maybe? And Elvira would teach Elvira the meaning of friendship and bad puns and jokes and it’d be cool. Yup.
Trivia about the featured IMDb trivia:
There is an end credits scene at the very end of the credits.
The featured trivia is followed by this other section.
Trivia about the IMDb “Crazy Credits” section:
[unmarked spoiler] is shown after the credits.
The bigbrains at IMDb never fail to disappoint, huh?
