Bold takes on Frankenstein and Cinderella open Sundance, while Juliette Lewis body-swaps with a chair
Our first Sundance 2025 dispatch highlights By Design, The Ugly Stepsister, Dead Lover, and more.
Samantha Mathis, Juliette Lewis and Robin Tunney appear in By Design by Amanda Kramer, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Patrick Meade Jones
Because I will be covering the 2025 Sundance Film Festival entirely from snowy, frozen Chicago instead of snowy, frozen Park City, my screening options are limited. Only a select few films opted in to the festival’s online offerings this year, which means The A.V. Club won’t be getting a look at some until right at the end of the fest. Other movies will remain entirely exclusive to Utah, rewarding those who bundle up and book the Airbnb with more than just the flu. But that just means that it’s easier for me to avoid some of the in-person problems that tend to crop up. Problems like screening-derailing sound issues, tickets swapped at the last moment because a film was edited without the financier’s knowledge, or audience members vomiting in the aisle.
The latter, a marketing boon to be sure, reportedly happened during one of my favorites of the festival so far: The Ugly Stepsister (B). The impressively nasty first feature from Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt, this grimmer than Grimm take on Cinderella has already been snapped up by horror streamer Shudder, and it’s easy to see why. As Elvira (Lea Myren) gets put through a medieval body-horror makeover by her gold-digging mother (Ane Dahl Torp)—in order to prepare for the prince’s ball, where Elvira may follow in her mom’s seductive footsteps—The Ugly Stepsister gets more and more brutal. It’s looksmaxxing at its most horrific.
There’s a bit of The Substance oozing from the severed extremities and anesthetic-free nosejobs, though its critique of beauty standards isn’t so self-loathing as it is generally furious at a larger social perspective. “Beauty is pain” becomes literally torturous. It’s not that Elvira inherently detests her body, her face, her poise, her status. It’s that her terrible mother and the equally terrible prince have expectations, expectations met without any sewn eyelids or parasitic weight-loss by Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), the perfectly pretty Cinderella stand-in. That the snobby Agnes is also sexually experienced, comfortable in her body, makes her a hateable foil as Elvira starts to embody the insecurities of those around her.
Though its visceral punishment of the human body is almost unrelenting (leading, perhaps, to that aforementioned puking), and Myren winningly obliges by nearly always screaming, hurling, or weeping through her scenes, The Ugly Stepsister isn’t Grimmdark. It’s mean, holding nothing back as it disenchants its heroine’s notions about romance and the upper crust, but it’s also a lushly decorated period piece that’s unafraid to burst its own bubble with gross gags, not unlike a juicier, less horny Poor Things. As Disney surely starts to push more Cinderella at us as that 1950 film heads towards its 75th anniversary in February, Blichfeldt’s film offers a R-rated counterpoint better than most “faithful” fairy tale adaptations.