2025 Horror Director Addresses Early Comparisons To Demi Moore’s The Substance After 97% RT Debut

The upcoming 2025 horror film The Ugly Stepsister has been compared to The Substance. Making Oscar history as the 7th horror movie ever to be nominated for Best Picture, The Substance was one of the breakout hits of 2024. It featured Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging actor whose fitness series gets canceled, and she resorts to taking a black-market drug in order to regain her younger body again. The film received praise for its original storyline, and mixture of humor with more shocking gore.

The Substance received great critical reviews and an overall positive audience reception. The movie got a Certified Fresh 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 75% Popcornmeter from its enthusiastic audience. It remains one of the most highly-rated and most-talked-about films from last year. The hope is that The Substance could also change the landscape for horror and how it is received in awards circles. It looks like The Ugly Stepsister might already be on a Substance-esque path with its early reviews.

The Ugly Stepsister Reacts To The Movie’s The Substance Comparisons

The Film Has Gotten Compared To The Substance

The Ugly Stepsister director speaks on the film’s early comparisons to The Substance after it debuted with a high Rotten Tomatoes score. The Ugly Stepsister is a 2025 body horror satire film about a woman named Elvira who has to battle against her shockingly beautiful stepsister in a world wherein beauty is treated as paramount. The Ugly Stepsister is directed by Emilie Blichfeldt and features a leading cast including Lea Myren, Flo Fagerli, Isac Calmroth, and Ralph Carlsson. The movie thus far has garnered a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.

In an interview with ScreenRant, Blichfeldt and lead actor Myren discuss the comparisons between The Ugly Stepsister and The Substance. The director mentioned that the two films are both in the body horror genre and are “battling the same theme.” She referred to The Substance as “beautifully thought-out body horror.” The positive reception of both The Substance and her movie The Ugly Stepsister gives her “hope for the future” as audiences seem interested in stories like this that are from a “female perspective.” Check out the full quotes below:

Emilie Blichfeldt: I think, although we’re battling the same theme as The Substance, and with some of the same, let’s say, formalistic tools of cinema-making, and the genre with the body horror, they are two very different movies, but I think it’s amazing that The Substance is trailblazing for us. There’s such a buzz for The Substance, which makes people so interested in our movie, because they’re like, “Oh my God, we understand the thing with feminism and body horror,” or beauty horror, as I like to call it. I think it is just so exciting, and I would say The Substance is quite obscure, it’s quite out there and it’s a very obscure, but beautifully thought-out body horror, through and through, and now suddenly it’s up for Oscars.

Lea Myren: The taste of it is also something you don’t really see in the bigger Hollywood movies, and to shovel our way through, yeah, it’s great.

Emilie Blichfeldt: And I think time’s ripe, it gives me hope for the future because it seems like the audience is hungry for these stories, and not just women, but also men. Of course we’re seeing it from a female perspective, but what’s happening in the world right now is that more and more men are also subjected to the same kind of pressure for a certain kind of an appearance. I think it’s deeply problematic, because it can really freeze us. It makes us very vulnerable and lonely when you’re under body pressure, and we need to come together as a society and say that we have to stop this. This is not healthy, and it’s not good for us. And that’s both for women and for men and for all of those in between. Yeah, it’s very interesting, because we had a similar idea at the same time. I didn’t know of The Substance before it came out at Cannes, and I got this idea eight years ago. So who knows? Is there a Japanese feminist body horror popping up, or German? Who knows? I certainly hope it doesn’t stop with us.

Our Take On This Early Comparison

The Substance Comparisons Could Be Good Press

Lea Myren as Elvira being fitted with a device over her nose in The Ugly Stepsister

While The Substance comparisons could also lead to further scrutiny from audiences down the line, any press that likens The Ugly Stepsister to The Substance is probably good publicity for the movie. Blichfeldt is also right in her hope that audiences are increasingly willing to watch movies from a female perspective. This is true with other Oscar nominees this year, which include female-focused stories like Wicked and Anora. Hopefully, audiences will respond well to The Ugly Stepsister, and it continues this positive trend, at least in the horror genre.