Emilie Blichfeldt
20 connections found
Filmography
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The Substance (2024)
Directed by Coralie Fargeat
influenced The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
Themes Visuals
…much like last year’s The Substance, examines the lengths women will go to in order to be chosen by men…
It’s The Substance by way of the Brothers Grimm.
The association between beauty and evil is hardly transgressive; The Substance only just finished its awards run. Like Fargeat’s film, The Ugly Stepsister opts to blame women for the impossible beauty standards that persevere, and make them the cruellest characters in the film.
Think “The Substance” (2024) adapts the Brothers Grimm’s “Aschenputtel,” which translates into “The Little Ash Girl,” except if “Cinderella” was told from the stepsisters’ point of view.
…much like the Oscar-nominated “The Substance,” a body-horror dramedy that with “The Ugly Stepsister” would make for an appropriate double bill.
The gory effects don’t reach the bloody excess of, say, “The Substance,”…
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Directed by Sofia Coppola
influenced The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
Visuals Music
…there is most definitely some Sofia Coppola influence here—namely, 2006’s Marie Antoinette, complete with the more modern music (albeit instrumental, 80s-sounding offerings and not outright pop hits from the Decade of Excess)…
Its aesthetic is a mix between the bewitching visuals in both Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled and Marie Antoinette, mixed with Lucky McGee’s disquieting May and Jack Hill’s 1967 Spider Baby.
The influence of Sofia Coppola and Marie Antionette is visible as well, particularly in the 1980s-inspired synthesizer soundtrack…
And yes, it all has a very Bridgerton sort of feel (think: the Featherington family), minus the total lack of romance and plus the glaring spotlight on the horrifying things that women did to themselves in a bid to look beautiful so that they might “secure their future” a.k.a. a man.
…a Busby Berkekely-inspired number that plays like something out of an episode of Bridgerton…
Since this takes place in a very Bridgerton-like time period with gothic undertones…
But it’s definitely also comparable, if not moreso, to obsession movies like Black Swan and Luca Guadagnino’s version of Suspiria, where the women will stop at nothing to prove they’re good enough.
What follows is a grim quest for perfection that makes Black Swan look like a movie starring Natalie Portman.
Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent (certainly not Wicked: For Good) remains the standard-bearer for such flip-the-script fairy tales…
…movies like Maleficent and Frozen remixed and reimagined the villains of other iconic fables into heroes more than ten years ago…
Its aesthetic is a mix between the bewitching visuals in both Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled and Marie Antoinette, mixed with Lucky McGee’s disquieting May and Jack Hill’s 1967 Spider Baby.
There are echoes of Dead Ringers in some of the surgery scenes…
It goes full throttle on the body horror in the way that is reminiscent of American Mary (dir. Jen and Sylvia Soskta, 2012)…
…movies like Maleficent and Frozen remixed and reimagined the villains of other iconic fables into heroes more than ten years ago…
The Neon Demon (2016)
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
influenced The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
Visuals
It goes full throttle on the body horror in the way that is reminiscent of American Mary (dir. Jen and Sylvia Soskta, 2012) and The Neon Demon (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016). What these films have in common with Blichfeldt’s tale is the way in which the body horror interacts with the story at hand.
…in scenes that recall the style and saturation of Anna Biller’s The Love Witch…
Blichfeldt’s premiere will remind body horror fans of other amazing firsts from Coralie Fergeat’s “Revenge” (2017) or Julia Ducournau’s “Raw” (2016).
Its aesthetic is a mix between the bewitching visuals in both Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled and Marie Antoinette, mixed with Lucky McGee’s disquieting May and Jack Hill’s 1967 Spider Baby.
But it’s definitely also comparable, if not moreso, to obsession movies like Black Swan and Luca Guadagnino’s version of Suspiria, where the women will stop at nothing to prove they’re good enough.
Sofia Coppola’s ahistoric cultural notes within “The Ugly Stepsister” such as the music and the dance choreography combined with Ari Aster’s images of decay and sounds of harp strings from “Midsommar” (2019) signifying an idealized life inspire Blichfeldt’s vision of a realistic, yet just as fantastical nightmarish world.
…as is the ongoing film trend of the past decade, which reached a certain apex with Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) in Joker, The Ugly Stepsister reframes the narrative to showcase how and why a supposedly “wicked” or “evil” person might end up that way.
Instead, it’s a coming-of-age story from the mold of Stephen King’s Carrie, only set in a more merciless world.
Blending lavish, period-accurate production design with absurdist humor from a Yorgos Lanthimos film (think Poor Things but bloodier)…
While ‘Bring Her Back’ might not hold a candle to other genre standouts this year like ‘Sinners’ and ‘The Ugly Stepsister’ overall…
Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent (certainly not Wicked: For Good) remains the standard-bearer for such flip-the-script fairy tales…