Rating: C
Dir: Andy Edwards
Star: Lauren Staerck, Natasha Henstridge, Stephanie Lodge, Beatrice Fletcher
If not as shameless as the strip-mining of formerly copyrighted characters, such as Winnie the Pooh or Mickey Mouse, this feels somewhat adjacent. It takes a public domain story, and gives it a violent spin, in this case by making Cinderella take bloody vengeance on her cruel step-relations. At least in this case, there are no shortage of dark elements in the source material. The Brothers Grimm version of the story, sees the step-sisters mutilate their own feet so the slipper fits – an incident present here, and not found in the Disney version, arguably making this more authentic. Sadly, we do not get another scene, where angry birds peck out the step-sisters’ eyes at Cinderella’s wedding. Still: horror precedent.
The first half is a relatively staid adaptation – with one major exception, that I’ll get to. Cinderella (Staerck) loses her father, and has to move in with evil stepmom Katherine (Lodge), who was actually responsible for the death of her husband, framing him for stealing some of the king’s jewels. Her daughters, Josephine (Fletcher) and Rachel (Megan Purvis) aren’t much better, tormenting their step-sister, though the extended whipping scene (top) is another not found in the House of Mouse version. Blah, ball, blah, prince, slipper. You know the drill. Except here’s the twist: the Fairy Godmother (Henstridge) is more like Doctor Who, bouncing through time and space for Cinderella’s benefit. For instance, her carriage is a Tesla driven by “Elon Musk”. That has not aged well.
Post-ball, things go from bad to worse and, largely egged on by the Fairy G, Cinderella turns a bit mad. Wearing a mask to hide her identity, she works her way through those she blames for tormenting her, including both step-sisters, the servant responsible for the whipping, and on up to Katherine. It’s reasonably adequate, though I’ve no clue what era or country this is supposed to be. Could be anything from pre-revolutionary France through to Edwardian England, in contrast to another Tom Jolliffe period script, for The Baby in the Basket, which had a much better sense of time and place. Meanwhile, the stately home shown in the drone shots clearly isn’t the cottage inhabited by Katherine, and the prince’s ball has approximately eight (8) attendees.
So the low-budget nature is often glaringly obvious, though it makes more effort than certain cheap British horror movies. Henstridge demonstrates a laudable willingness to go for it, and her energy peps things up, whenever she is on screen. I wish the rest of the cast had leaned similarly into the obvious panto possibilities, and the film hadn’t faffed around for so much before embracing its exploitation roots. Yet I cannot bring myself to hate entirely any flick with a death by croquet mallet, and there is potential here, for the original fairy stories were often spectacularly brutal. There’s good reason The Juniper Tree, with its “themes of child abuse, murder, cannibalism and biblical symbolism” has never been turned into a Disney cartoon. Just an Icelandic movie which was the debut of Bjork…