Emilie Blichfeldt sin debutfilm Den stygge stesøsteren hadde premiere i helgen i Midnight-programmet på Sundance filmfestival. Hennes friske vri på eventyret om Askepott er en av filmene som har vekket største oppsikt etter premieren på festivalen så langt. Ja, den har allerede skapt en viss oppstandelse på grunn av rykter om at en av de som så filmen fikk et illebefinnende av de sterkeste scenene.

Dette har også kritikerne merket seg. De første anmeldelsene i bransjeblader som Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Screen Daily og Indiewire understreker at dette ikke er en film for sarte personer. Filmen beskrives som en utfordrende «body horror».

Hollywood reporters kritiker fremhever slektskapet med Brødrene Grimm – og Coralie Fargets mye omtalte «body horror» The Substance:

«In The Ugly Stepsister, Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt recasts the story of these “ugly” young women as a horrifying quest for beauty. Recall, in the Brothers Grimm story, how one of the stepsisters, in a grisly attempt to fit into the famed slipper, takes a knife to her toes. Blichfeldt indulges in this gruesome atmosphere and considers what other ways a young woman might mutilate herself for acceptance. On the heels of Coralie Fargeat’s beauty-body horror The Substance, The Ugly Stepsister will likely find an audience when Shudder releases it this year.»

Variety’s kritiker berømmer den norske filmskaperens vilje til å gå tilbake til Hollywood-eventyrenes mørke røtter. Disney hentet som kjent mye inspirasjon fra Brødrene Grimm og europeisk fortellertradisjoner – før han gjenskapte dem med en rosenrød overflate.

«Most fairy tales were told and retold countless times before Walt Disney ever got his hands on them, and yet, the sensibility behind such animated classics as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Sleeping Beauty” has proven so popular on such an international scale that few know these stories’ darker origins. The family-friendly studio’s more-wholesome-than-horrifying approach gives Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt plenty of room to push back with “The Ugly Stepsister,” a deliciously extreme take on the beloved “Cinderella” legend, complete with broken noses, severed toes and other gory details befitting the Grimm bros».

Screen daily omtaler Blichfeldt «body horror-kommentar» og skjeve komedie som både blodig og djerv, selv om den ikke lykkes med alt:

«Reinventing the Cinderella story as a wry comedy and body-horror commentary, Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt’s feature debut gets bloody and bold as it focuses on a young woman determined to win a prince’s heart. 

Despite other strong performances — especially from Calmroth, a hoot as the personality-free prince — the film ends up succeeding better as a stylish, graphic fairytale riff than as a thoughtful exploration of the rigid definitions of female beauty. Blichfeldt has some surprises in store but, rather than developing her thesis, she tends to repeat her points, mostly by going gorier and more disturbing over the film’s runtime. Uneven as it is, Blichfeldt’s debut is fuelled by her desire to tear down the misogyny of our classic fairy tales, replacing the outdated notions about love and romance with blood, rot and vomit.»

Kritikeren i Indiewire har også enkelte forbehold, men anerkjenner filmens kvaliteter. Kanskje må filmen finne seg i å leve i skyggen av The Substance – men kanskje også dra nytte av det momentumet filmen har skapt på vegne av feministisk «body horror.»:

«It’s tough times out there for a feminist body horror fairy tale in a newly post-Substance filmmaking world. Coralie Fargeat’s gory parable of the abyss of self-loathing at the center of women’s society-stoked quest for beauty upped the stakes in terms of the genre’s potential cultural reach.)

But female genre directors have been responding to impossible, often body-contorting standards of beauty for decades. Enter Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt, who makes her gruesome entrée into that movement with her playfully grotesque feature debut “The Ugly Stepsister.” One character’s name being Sophie von Kronenberg in this stylized gothic retelling of the Grimm Brothers’ spin on Cinderella should offer enough portent for where the film is heading in all its nose-breaking, flesh-eating, tapeworm-infested grandeur.»