The Ugly (2025)

In The Ugly, acclaimed South Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan, Hellbound) takes a striking creative departure—trading kinetic spectacle for quiet, psychological intensity. This haunting, generational mystery unspools like a whispered confession across decades, offering a deeply affecting meditation on loss, memory, and the silent fractures that define family histories.

Premiering at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival in the Special Presentations section, The Ugly is poised to leave a lasting mark—not through shock, but through emotional excavation. Adapted from Yeon’s own 2018 graphic novel, the film is both an intimate character study and a social commentary, woven into the textures of South Korea’s industrial past.

Plot: A Funeral Unearths More Than Bones

At the heart of The Ugly is Im Dong Hwan (Park Jung Min), a quiet man confronting a legacy of silence. When the skeletal remains of his mother, Jung Young Hee, are discovered after 40 years, Dong Hwan organizes a funeral—not out of closure, but out of necessity. His mother’s death was never spoken of, her absence buried as deeply as her body.

Teaming up with documentary producer Kim Soo Jin (Han Ji Hyun), who is coincidentally making a film about his father, Dong Hwan begins a personal investigation. His father, Im Young Gyu (Kwon Hae Hyo), is now a blind, elderly master of seal engraving—a man whose memories of his wife are sensory, felt more through tactile impressions and lingering sorrow than visual detail.

As the narrative travels between the 1970s garment factories of Cheonggyecheon and modern-day Seoul, Dong Hwan uncovers long-silenced stories from former workers, family acquaintances, and faded photographs. The mystery surrounding his mother’s disappearance is slowly unraveled—not with explosive revelations, but with emotional truths that reshape everything he thought he knew.

Performances: Duality and Depth

Park Jung Min is nothing short of extraordinary. In a delicate and complex dual performance, he plays both Dong Hwan and the younger version of his father, capturing two men caught in parallel currents of grief, guilt, and inherited silence. His portrayal is restrained, deeply human, and layered with emotional conflict—one of the most subtle yet powerful performances of his career.

Han Ji Hyun offers a quiet but grounding presence as Soo Jin, whose pursuit of her own truth gradually becomes entangled with Dong Hwan’s journey. Kwon Hae Hyo, meanwhile, delivers a soul-stirring performance as the elder Im Young Gyu—a man whose blindness symbolizes not only physical loss, but emotional repression.

Direction and Visual Language: Quiet Realism

Director Yeon Sang-ho proves his versatility with The Ugly. Far removed from the adrenaline-fueled energy of Train to Busan, this film is still, contemplative, and hauntingly restrained. Yeon approaches the material with poetic realism, allowing silence to speak as loudly as dialogue.

The visual storytelling, supported by art direction steeped in the hues and textures of 1970s Korea, enhances the themes of absence and memory. Faded factory uniforms, old signage, and cramped apartments evoke both nostalgia and melancholy. The use of tight framing and minimal score lets emotions simmer beneath the surface. Each still cut—already generating buzz online—resembles a memory frozen in time.

Themes: Touching the Past with Blind Hands

The Ugly is not just a mystery—it’s a study in generational trauma, inherited grief, and the ways in which families preserve secrets out of love, shame, or survival. The film asks a devastatingly simple question:
“How do you remember someone you’ve never truly known?”

The film also explores the disconnect between memory and truth, and how perception—especially shaped by disability, trauma, or time—can obscure the past rather than reveal it. Im Young Gyu’s blindness becomes a metaphor for both what we choose not to see and what we are incapable of seeing, even when it's directly in front of us.

Final Verdict: A Quiet Masterwork of Emotional Mystery

The Ugly is an understated yet deeply moving film that lingers long after its final frame. With a modest budget (₩200 million) and a powerful script, Yeon Sang-ho proves that intimacy can be just as arresting as spectacle. This is a film made not for adrenaline, but for the soul—for anyone who has ever wondered about the ghosts in their family’s past, or the stories left untold around the dinner table.

While the mystery at its center unfolds slowly, its emotional resonance hits with devastating clarity. This is a film that trusts its audience to listen, to feel, and to remember.

Rating: ★★★★★ 4.7/5
A haunting, elegant thriller that finds its power in what is unsaid.