Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt's debut film The Ugly Stepsister reimagines Cinderella as a body horror tale and has earned a shortlist spot for best makeup and hairstyling at the 98th Academy Awards. The movie, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, follows the ugly stepsister Elvira's extreme body modifications to meet beauty standards. Makeup artists detail the practical effects that brought these gruesome transformations to life.
Emilie Blichfeldt's feature debut, The Ugly Stepsister, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier in 2025 and was later acquired by Independent Film Company and Shudder. The film shifts the Cinderella narrative to the perspective of the vilified stepsister, Elvira, played by Lea Myren, as she undergoes increasingly drastic body alterations in a 19th-century setting to attend the prince's ball and conform to societal beauty ideals.
Makeup designer Anne Cathrine Sauerberg emphasized creating a relatable character: "The most important thing was to make just a normal, cute teenager who is just really in love with this prince, and to show what people do to themselves." To portray Myren, aged 24, as a teenager, prosthetic makeup designer Thomas Foldberg applied subtle prosthetics including cheeks, a nose, and a fake neck that concealed the collarbone and neck muscles for a softer appearance. "She was wearing cheeks and a nose and has a fake neck that actually stops in the middle of the neck," Foldberg explained. "We didn’t want her neck to be too broad. We wanted to erase the collarbone and some of the neck muscles."
Elvira's transformations begin subtly. Prompted by her mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), she undergoes a nose realignment by doctor Adam Lundgren, involving a fracture and face brace, resulting in a more conventional nose via adjusted prosthetics. This escalates to an eyelash transplant, with the procedure shown in extreme close-up using a mix of practical effects and compositing by visual effects supervisor Peter Hjort: the actress's eye was blended onto a dummy head for realism.
The film's most visceral moments draw from the original Cinderella folk tale. After the ball, Elvira severs her toes to fit the slipper left by her stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), using a prosthetic foot with rigged blood effects. When Rebekka discovers the error, she inflicts the same on the left foot, captured in a wide shot hiding the real leg under the dress.
Additional horror stems from a tapeworm Elvira ingests for weight loss, later extracted by her sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) in a tug-of-war scene achieved with silicone worm pieces fed through a face contraption and composited out, plus a puppet head for slime expulsion.
Relying on practical effects with minimal CGI, the film has been shortlisted for best makeup and hairstyling at the 98th Academy Awards, marking the first such nod for IFC and Shudder. Foldberg praised Blichfeldt's preparation: "She was so well prepared and had so many ideas. I was really, really blown away by her knowledge of genre films." Sauerberg added, "We all know Cinderella’s story so well, so we all have different pictures of how it should look like, and [Blichfeldt’s] vision was just so extremely clear."
