{Blu-ray Review} The Ugly Stepsister (2025): Second Sight’s Limited Edition Is a Fairy Tale Worth Owning Forever

You already know Cinderella. You know the glass slipper, the pumpkin carriage, the wicked stepsisters who exist only to be foils for a golden heroine on her way to a happily ever after. You have been told this story a hundred times, and every time, the stepsister is the villain: ugly, jealous, cruel, existing only to lose. Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt has seen that story too, and she has decided, magnificently, to burn it down.

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The Ugly Stepsister is Oscar-nominated, stomach-churning, and genuinely unlike anything else in recent horror. The film retells the Cinderella myth through the eyes of Elvira (Lea Myren), the so-called ugly one. When her recently widowed mother Rebekka (a wonderfully unsettling Ane Dahl Torp) drags her daughters to live with a new husband who promptly dies, the family’s financial future suddenly rests on Elvira winning the heart of Prince Julian at the royal ball. Never mind that Elvira is kind, poetic, and a hopeless romantic. Never mind that she is a fully formed human being. The kingdom has decided she is not beautiful enough, and that verdict shapes everything that follows.

What Blichfeldt understands, and what makes the film so devastating, is that this is not a story about a monster. Elvira begins the film reading poetry and daydreaming. She is sweet. She is hopeful. And she is systematically destroyed by a world that insists her worth is entirely tied to her appearance. As she submits to increasingly brutal cosmetic procedures, broken noses, eyelashes sewn into eyelids, tapeworm cures, we are not watching a villain get what she deserves. We are watching a girl be eaten alive by an impossible standard, with her own mother holding the fork.

This is where the film’s approach to gore earns every drop of blood it spills. These are not cheap shocks deployed for cheap thrills. Blichfeldt and effects artist Thomas Foldberg have created a cascade of practical horror that functions as visceral feminist commentary. Each procedure is more disturbing than the last, and the film never lets you look away with relief, because the horror is not supernatural. It is recognizable. It is a beauty standard taken to its logical, hideous conclusion. The gore is not there to disgust you and move on. It is there to make you feel something you will not shake for days.

And the costumes. The cinematographer Marcel Zyskind and the production design team have conjured a fairy-tale kingdom that sits somewhere between a Brothers Grimm woodcut and a Gothic fever dream. The period costuming is extraordinary: voluminous, richly detailed, with an eye for silhouette and texture that makes every frame look painted. The contrast between Elvira’s increasingly elaborate and painful “improvements” against the natural, careless beauty of stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss, quietly magnetic) is written right into the clothing. This is a film that looks ravishing even when it is making you gag, and that tension between surface beauty and the rot beneath it is the whole point.

Second Sight Films has brought the film home in the way it deserves with a dual Limited Edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray release that is an essential collector’s piece in its own right. The UHD is presented in HDR with Dolby Vision, and the image quality is stunning, every gorgeous and grotesque detail rendered in full. The special features include two new audio commentaries: one with director Emilie Blichfeldt and filmmaker Patrik Syversen, and a second by critic Meagan Navarro. Both tracks are substantive and deeply engaged with the film’s themes, making them ideal companion listening for a second watch.

The real treasures are the interviews. “Character and Gore” is a new conversation with effects artist Thomas Foldberg, and it is an absolute must-watch for horror fans, an illuminating look at how the film’s most unforgettable practical effects were conceived and executed. “Generational Trauma” features actor Lea Myren discussing her remarkable performance, while “Take Up Space” gives Thea Sofie Loch Næss her deserved spotlight as well. There is also “The Beauty of Ugly: The Effects of The Ugly Stepsister” and the essay-driven “A Cinderella Story” by Kat Hughes. Blichfeldt’s two short films, How Do You Like My Hair? and Sara’s Intimate Confessions, are included as well, giving vital context to the thematic obsessions that power this feature. The 120-page companion book rounds out the package, featuring an essay by Blichfeldt herself alongside new critical writing and storyboard comparisons. It is the kind of physical object that makes a limited edition feel genuinely worth owning.

The Ugly Stepsister is one of the best horror films of the past several years: furious, funny, heartbreaking, and uncompromising in ways that linger long after the credits roll. It takes Cinderella’s villain, looks her in the eyes, and asks what the story looks like from where she is standing. The answer is ugly, and absolutely essential.

Buy the Limited Edition 4K UHD + Blu-ray from Second Sight Films ($45.50)

Buy the Standard Edition 4K UHD from Second Sight Films ($28.43)