by Jason Osiason

The Ugly Stepsister is The Substance meets Raw for period fairytales, it’s sick, twisted, and delightfully gruesome. This unhinged take on Cinderella from her stepsister’s POV delivers audience-squirming body horror chaos at its finest.

Elvira isn’t just envious of her effortlessly beautiful stepsister, Agnes, she’s consumed by the idea that if she can change herself enough, she’ll finally be seen, desired, chosen. Her mother fuels the obsession, pushing her toward brutal self-reinvention in pursuit of Prince Julian’s attention. What starts as small sacrifices escalates into something monstrous—starvation, mutilation, a complete erasure of self in the name of perfection. The film takes body horror to sickening extremes, forcing you to feel every ache, every scrape, every desperate attempt to force beauty out of a body that refuses to comply.

The penetrating use of stomach-grumbling sounds makes hunger feel like a living thing, gnawing away at the edges of every scene. And then there’s the ending—so shocking, so grotesquely unforgettable, it’s destined to cement itself in horror history.

It’s a brutal, uncomfortable film that isn’t afraid to go there, but not everything lands perfectly. Some stretches drag longer than they need to, and while the messaging about beauty obsession is effective, it doesn’t always cut as deep as it could. Still, when it works, it works—a film that lingers in your mind and under your skin, even if it doesn’t fully reinvent the genre. [B]