Movies
Lavish Fairy Tale Meets Brutal Horror in ‘The Ugly Stepsister’ New Images
Cinderella gets a gruesome horror twist in The Ugly Stepsister, the feature debut by writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt. IFC Films and Shudder has released a massive batch of new images from the Cinderalla horror movie that highlight the film’s lavish sense of fairy tale style.
The darkly entertaining fairy tale horror film will release in theaters on April 18, 2025.
The Ugly Stepsister follows “Elvira (Lea Myren) as she prepares to earn the prince’s affection at any cost. In a kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will compete with the beautiful and enchanting Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) to become the belle of the ball.”
While the horror fairy tale has made headlines after making one person vomit at the premiere, the new images showcase the film’s visual style and stunning production design. Most of all, it highlights the work costume design by Manon Rasmussen (The House That Jack Built, Melancholia). The press release notes that “Blichfeldt conducted extensive research early on, defining silhouettes, periods, and details that aligned with the film’s vision, even consulting with fashion icon Lady Amanda Harlech.”
“Manon has an unmatched talent for crafting costumes that feel like an extension of the character, incorporating worn, stitched textures to make the actors feel at home in their roles. Together, we play on Disney’s iconic silhouettes for Cinderella and the stepsisters, tying these designs to the mid/late 1800s when cosmetic surgery was beginning to emerge in medical practice,” Blichfeldt said.
I wrote in my Sundance review, “The production design is stunning and immersive, creating an almost ethereal backdrop to a grim, gory body horror tale, and the characters are wonderfully nuanced and authentic. Blichfeldt crafts an impressive feature debut that manages a rare feat: offering a wholly unique version of a classic fairy tale that we’ve never seen before while returning to its violent roots. It’s elegant, stylish, and gnarly.”
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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