Panic Fest 2025: The Ugly Stepsister slides a glass slipper onto body horror in this wickedly original twist

Courtesy Panic Fest

The Panic Fest horror/genre film festival is currently running in KC for its 2025 season at Screenland Armour. These film reviews are from indie and studio horror/comedy/sci-fi features premiering right now in the Northland, or hitting major theaters/VOD soon. Catch up with all our coverage here.

In her feature debut, The Ugly Stepsister, Emilie Blichfeldt flips the point of view and public perception of the old glass slipper fables, creating a grotesque, beautiful, and harrowing tale that proves that body horror knows no period or bounds. The darker origins that tales like Rapunzel and Cinderella stemmed from are alive and bloody well.

As the film opens in the 19th Century, widow Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) is traveling with her two daughters, Elvira (Lea Mathilde Skar-Myren) and Alma (Flo Fagerli) to Swedlandia, to begin a new life. Rebekka has managed to enter into marriage with an older widowed landowner, Otto (Ralph Carlsson) who shares his home with his daughter, Agnes.

Yet just a joy starts to fill a large estate; tragedy strikes twice. First, Otto passes away suddenly from a heart attack. The second and more damning blow is that it turns out both widows entered into marriage, believing the other has money.

Penniless and grief-stricken, the women wonder how they will survive when status and marriage mean everything. Just as they are at their lowest, invitations arrive for the ball of Price Julian (Isac Calmroth), who is looking to marry. Sensing a chance to turn their fortune Rebekka embarks on a quest to transform her plain daughter into the bell of the ball, as Agnes harbors plans of her own.

What’s immediately striking about The Ugly Stepsister, is just how confidently composed it is for a feature debut. There are few false notes over the course of its 109-minute runtime. The costumes by Mamon Rasmussen, cinematography by Marcel Zyskind, and production design by Sabine Hviid all create a period that’s ground but tinged with a bit of diffused magic realism.

Blichfeldt’s true masterstroke though, is centering the film through Elvira’s gaze. Hopefully, naive and just wanting to do the best for her family is hardly the image centuries would impart on the character. Skar-Myren is mesmerizing, playing bewildered and awestruck at every turn. The only vice harbored is being jealous of those for whom things come so easily. Compared to others, that’s almost a saintly quality, making Elvira an extremely sympathetic character, as her story dovetails into that of horror and despair.

Courtesy Panic Fest

That last bit is where things go over the deep end. This is a warts-and-all film that shows how far people are willing to go in the name of beauty. Or at least how far mothers are willing to push their daughters. Elvira goes through the wringer with a barbaric nose job, eye work that would make Lucio Fulci wince, and a tiny white egg that leads to one of the most gut-wrenching and toe-curling grotesque sequences ever to hit the silver screen.

If The Ugly Stepsister were built entirely around one strong performance, it would be interesting enough. Blichfeldt is smarter than that, though, allowing every character to be fully formed while also subverting who these people “should” be. Rebekka isn’t wicked. She may be conniving and manipulative, but she knows it’s necessary for survival. Julian is the opposite of what his princely poetry may have others believe, more content to whet his proverbial beak than put quill to paper.

Then there’s Agnes, who possesses the classic qualities of a princess: grace, beauty, and skill. At the same time, she’s more callous, judgmental, and less pure than tales would tell. “Cinderella” is a nickname signifying her disgrace upon the family rather than locking away her beauty.

Whenever a new adaptation of a celebrated story comes down the pipe, it’s usually met with a fair amount of apprehension. From its opening passages to its quietly gripping ending, The Ugly Stepsister lets you know you’re watching something special and unique.

Not only are you witnessing a daring take on a fairy tale, but you’re also seeing the first steps of what’s sure to be a fruitful career for Blichfeldt.