Yes, let’s have a “Cinderella” without the spin. Pound home the “princess” as beauty bias messaging with body horror driven by body dysphoria.

And make it splatter film bloody, sexually explicit and occasionally funny — laughs with a grimace of pain and a touch of turn-away gruesome. Nothing “Wicked” about that.

“The Ugly Stepsister” is a dark dissection of a classic fairy tale, a Norwegian horror comedy about how “Real beauty comes from inside” is a lie and “beauty is pain” is what “they” never tell you.

Lea Myren stars as Elvira, a moon-eyed romantic who reads the poetry of the kingdom’s prince and dreams of one day marrying him. Her mother (Ane Dahl Torp) remains a great beauty, her younger sister (Flo Fagerli) is cute, so perhaps one day she’ll blossom, too and her wish will come true.

First, though, widowed mom has to marry a man with money. Sure, his only daughter (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) may be a classic blonde Nordic beauty who turns heads. But Agnes is smitten with the handsome stableboy (Malte Gårdinger) with nary a thought of Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth) in her head.

But when the elderly groom doesn’t make it through one slice of wedding cake, all bets off. It seems mother Rebekka was relieved to be marrying money, while her elderly titled intended was certain she was the one who was loaded.

“They have no money!” sounds even more dire and disappointing in Norwegian (with English subtitles). Now, marrying money becomes the entire household’s obsession.

A royal ball for all the “noble virgins” of the kingdom, thrown for the benefit of Prince Julian? That could be their golden ticket.

Agnes and Elvira are in the dance class that’s to perform a little number for the prince, but Rebekka conspires to fix it so that Agnes doesn’t get the spotlight. As the blonde is cruel to plain and somewhat simple Elvira, we sympathize with that.

But what mother puts poor Elvira through — baroque braces, a nose job and baroque fairy tale eyelash surgery — via callous Queer Eye for the Straight Girl Dr. Esthétique (Adam Lundgren)– tells us no one here gets off lightly.

Weight loss? Two words to turn your stomach come to mind.

“Tapeworm egg.”

Myren walks a fine, funny line with this performance, making Elvira by turns pitiable and sympathetic, and crazed and cruel and laughable.

Loch Næss — let’s assume that’s a stage name — likewise upends expectations for the young noblelady who finds herself knocked on her entitlement and forced to do menial work. She makes sympathizing for Cinderella a hard sell.

Writer-director Blichfeldt’s debut feature is more cringe-worthy than laugh-out-loud funny. She picked obvious targets.

But there’s a lot to be said for having the audicity to “go there” and go gory when you’re sending up the ugly open secret that “Beauty is pain,” that it’s a trap and that it’s well past time to stop taking fairy tales with princes and “Sleeping Beauties” at “children’s story” face value.

Which is one reason among many why “The Ugly Stepsister” will never play on The Hallmark Channel.

Rating: unrated, graphic, bloody violence, explicit sex, nudity

Cast: Lea Myren, Thea Sofie Loch Næss,
Isac Calmroth, Adam Lundgren, Flo Fagerli and Ane Dahl Torp

Credits: Scripted and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt. An IFC/Shudder release.

Running time: 1:45