The Ugly Stepsister 4K 2025 Ultra HD 2160p

Storyline
Elvira will go to any lengths to compete with her insanely-beautiful stepsister, the enchanting Agnes, and is willing to use blood, sweat, and tears to conquer the prince's heart. In a fairy-tale kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira fights tooth and nail to become the belle of the ball.

User Review

No matter how hard marketers try, this is not a new “Substance.” Of course, the trend set in the aforementioned film, where the body becomes a battlefield with social norms, continues. But while Farzha spoke about the fear of aging, the director of The Ugly Sister reveals the trauma inflicted since childhood. Maternal abuse here is a logical consequence of a world where women are treated as commodities.

I liked the film as a caustic social satire and a reinterpretation of the Cinderella fairy tale through the prism of feminist protest. The story of Elvira, the “ugly” stepsister played by Lea Muren, turns the familiar plot into a dark parable about violence against the female body. Her mother Rebecca, played with maniacal conviction by Ane Dahl Torp, is not just a tyrant — she is a victim of a system where beauty becomes currency and marriage is the only chance to escape poverty. Monstrous procedures such as “correcting” the nose with a hammer or swallowing a parasite to lose weight are literal instruments of oppression, taken to the point of absurdity.

The film shocks with its visual audacity: scenes where the disfigured Elvira tears the stitches from her face to the sound of 1970s electronic music resemble an aesthetic rebellion against glossy Disney templates. Even Cinderella here is not an innocent victim, but a calculating manipulator whose “natural” beauty only masks her cynicism. But behind the vivid images, the depth is lost: secondary plots such as Cinderella's romance with the stable boy or hints of class struggle seem more like decorations than full-fledged elements of the drama.

In addition, patriarchy in the film is reduced to caricature. All the male characters — from the narcissistic prince to the cocaine-addicted surgeon — are deliberately portrayed as grotesquely primitive, which simplifies the message. This one-dimensionality contrasts with the visual complexity: while the main scenes are rendered in a dark aesthetic, the pastel episodes, where the sister dreams of a life with the infantile prince, unexpectedly resemble scenes from a teen series. Such transitions create dissonance, throwing the viewer off balance.

Despite its provocativeness and occasional outright nastiness (in contrast to the stylized aesthetics of Substance), the film is captivating. For me, it became the antithesis of Disney's “cotton candy” — a reminder of the dark originals by the Brothers Grimm, which is so necessary in an era of endless remakes. If you have a strong stomach and are not hypersensitive to physical grotesqueness, this experience is worth going through. Yes, the message is rough around the edges, and some ideas are not fully developed, but for a debut work, it is more than worthy.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (85.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1

Info Audio

#Norwegian: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#German: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Info Subtitles