We all know the story too well: the orphan girl forced by her stepmother to become a servant, the two jealous stepsisters envious of her unmatched beauty, the palace ball, the fairy godmother who provides the dress and carriage so the girl can be a princess for a night, the midnight chimes marking the end of the spell, the lost glass slipper, and the love-struck prince searching for the woman who fit it—a woman he met only for a fleeting moment.

Charles Perrault’s 1637 fairy tale Cinderella needs no introduction. Regardless of how often the story is retold, good always triumphs over evil, and beauty is a virtue on par with grace. In her feature-length debut, Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt explores the pathos of the ugly stepsisters, who exist solely to be hated or punished in the original telling. More specifically, The Ugly Stepsister focuses on one of them, drawing inspiration from the darker versions of the tale.

While these stories essentially function as moral fables meant to inspire nobility and kindness, they also carry an unavoidable undercurrent of misogyny for modern readers—who recognize that the worship and value placed on beauty come loaded with conditions and consequences, all tightly bound to the patriarchy. With castles, forests, and flowing gowns, Blichfeldt’s version remains visually rooted in the historical and fantastical realm evoked by the original fairy tale, but it does so from a distinctly revisionist stance, casting a critical eye on the feminine beauty ideals that have been promoted, consumed, and exploited through countless retellings.

The filmmaker’s sympathy for the stepsister isn’t about sanctifying her or reducing her to a mere victim, but about making her an active protagonist—one who suffers the crushing weight and cost of the vicious desire to attain beauty, no matter what it takes. At first, Elvira (Lea Myren) is unaware that her stepsister Agnes’s (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) beauty could stand in the way of her fantasy of marrying Julian (Isac Calmroth), the dashing prince of the kingdom—his book of romantic poetry is eagerly devoured by every girl in the region.

The sisters soon find themselves at the heart of a complicated family dynamic. Elvira’s mother, Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), married Agnes’s father believing he was wealthy. When Otto (Ralph Carlsson) suddenly dies—choking during a family dinner—it’s revealed that neither parent had the fortune the other believed they did. This peculiar household also includes the second stepsister from the fairy tale, the introverted Alma (Flo Fagerli), Elvira’s younger sister and a reliable point of audience identification, silently judging the strange, distorted world around her.

Rebekka pins all her hopes on Elvira landing a suitable husband at the prince’s ball. Less practical and more prone to delusion, Elvira sets her sights on the prince, though everyone around her sees her as little more than a foolish and unattractive creature. Her dance teacher gives her the lead role in a performance prepared for the prince, but only because her mother has paid extra for it. Soon, the teenager is subjected to a series of surgical and cosmetic treatments based on real 19th-century practices—first, a brutal nose surgery, whose preparation eerily mirrors that of a lobotomy. That scene is merely a prelude to the self-inflicted and mutually agreed-upon tortures yet to come. Meanwhile, Agnes is confined to the kitchen as punishment for taking the stable boy as a lover (this is definitely not your Disney Cinderella). In this retelling, nausea and black comedy go hand in hand. The Ugly Stepsister is a sour candy of a film: visually stunning while reveling in its most violent moments.

The darker versions of Cinderella portray the stepsisters slicing off toes and heels to force their feet into the glass slipper. That gruesomeness was likely the launching point for Blichfeldt’s vision—and it serves as the film’s centerpiece. A decomposing corpse, stitched eyelids, and one of the most grotesque vomiting scenes in recent memory are just a few of the highlights on this body horror menu. Yet the film still manages to make us care about Elvira despite her erratic behavior, keeping nihilism at bay.

Toward the end, though, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of frustration at the lack of deeper exploration into the dynamics between Elvira and the Cinderella figure—or even with the other stepsister. Clearly, the filmmaker’s priorities lie elsewhere: telling a tale of feminine vanity punished for the gleeful delight of audiences hungry for excess and Grand Guignol. The ball scene is dreamy, with a hint of irony, and it’s precisely this ambivalence between the beautiful and the macabre that showcases Blichfeldt’s sharp understanding of the narrative and visual allure that has made fairy tales immortal—and why they’ll never go out of style. Vanity and envy are two sides of the same coin. At least in fairy tales, it’s always clear how one person’s fortune is another’s misery—especially when the currency is female beauty.