You’ll never look at The Ugly Stepsister without understanding her pain and suffering again. Yet this gore and violence seem to be here for shock value, reminding us with very blunt metaphors that the price of beauty is pain.

| Original Score: 6/10 | May 15, 2025

If you're a fan of the fairytale of cinderella but looking for a more sinister and dark version of the story, well look no further then "The Ugly Stepsister. A twisted fever dream you never knew you needed.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 12, 2025

[The gory] scenes punctuate the brutal unfairness foisted on these characters, an ocean and a couple centuries away from us — but as real and as sympathetic as your neighbor.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 10, 2025

Emilie Blichfeldt’s directorial debut gives her Cinderella story a twisted body-horror spin.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 9, 2025

No matter how many toes it slices off, the slipper still doesn’t fit.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 8, 2025

Combining gag-worthy practical effects with the very real horrors of being a woman, The Ugly Stepsister takes the idea of a fairytale and transforms it into a nauseating body horror masterpiece.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 8, 2025

The Ugly Stepsister, like any quality feature, blends past pop culture influences into something unabashedly singular.

| May 5, 2025

The Ugly Stepsister is a stunning motion picture, beautifully crafted, enthusiastically performed, and executed through a cracked prism of a uniquely Nordic vision.

| May 3, 2025

It's held together by a captivating, heartbreaking performance by former child star Myren as the supposedly unlovable ingenue.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 2, 2025

As satire gradually gives way to sadism, I found "Stepsister" more unpleasant than anything, though it’s an impressively accomplished debut feature.

| May 1, 2025

That’s impressive — 30 years of film criticism and this is the first time that I’ve had to turn away from the screen for fear of retching.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 28, 2025

Blichfeldt’s masterfully orchestrated drama has the ability to reacquaint even the most iron-stomached viewer with their lunch.

| Apr 27, 2025

The Ugly Stepsister is a biting satire of beauty standards as well as the false notions of fairy tale romance we are told as children. This film is all about how damaging it is to change ourselves to fit a narrow view of what it means to be beautiful.

| Apr 27, 2025

In Emilie Blichfeldt's 'The Ugly Stepsister', the Cinderella story becomes an extravagant vision of evil, fear and inner darkness. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: A+ | Apr 26, 2025

Without the need for grue and splurge, amid the galumphing and toppling, we witness the impossibility, and general undesirability, of transforming flesh and blood into weightless, ethereal fantasy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 25, 2025

The film’s creative gore alone cannot paper over the ultimate flimsiness of Blichfeldt’s concept, which amounts to an adolescent scrawl of fairytale satire.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 25, 2025

A smart, bold, and visually rich work that both enchants and challenges.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 25, 2025

The Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt roasts conventional heroines and female beauty standards in this gruesome, hilarious reworking of Cinderella.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2025

Revels in so much twisted body horror and psychological torment that even the Brothers Grimm would cringe with disgust.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2025

This is a movie hyper-aware of the sexual and patriarchal imagery of Cinderella... Blichfeldt has made an elegant debut.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 24, 2025