THE UGLY

South Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho has shown himself adept at zombies, whether in animation (Seoul Station) or live action (Train to Busan and its sequel). Quite adept, in fact, as those movies kick undead ass. Now he turns his attention to a different kind of horror, if not of rotting flesh than of the rot within societal conventions.

In The Ugly, Yeon spins a tale in two different time periods, centering the narrative on a father, Im Yeong-gyu, and son, Im Dong-hwan, the actor Park Jeong-min (Decision to Leave) playing the former in the past and the latter in the present. That dad is blind, a fact which plays a significant role in the plot. As a young man, Yeong-gyu suffers extreme prejudice from those around him, shaping his view of the world.

So, too, does the woman who will, in that past, become his wife, Jung Young-hee (Shin Hyun-been); her face is hidden throughout the film because she is, apparently, too unsightly to behold. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, whether those eyes see or not. The Ugly asks us to question established norms and understand how much they corrupt us and destroy our ability to empathize with others.

Structured as a detective story, the movie follows Dong-hwan as, reluctantly working with a documentarian, Kim Su-jin (Han Ji-hyeon), who is making a series about Yeong-gyu (a renowned engraver), he investigates the life of his mother. She went missing 40 years prior, just after his birth, and her remains have just recently been discovered. It looks like foul play.

Almost everyone in the drama, with the possible exception of Dong-hwan and Young-hee, and maybe, for all we know at the start, Yeong-gyu, is capable of deeply manipulative and horrific behavior. When Yeong-gyu and Su-jin interview those who knew Young-hee before her death, these older folks justify what they did by claiming that the economic situation in South Korea was hard back then. There’s really no excuse, though.

The director, who also wrote the screenplay—based on his own graphic novel—cuts back and forth between the earlier era and now, shrouding Young-hee’s fate in mystery until the very end. Slowly, we grow to suspect motive and killer, only to have the truth be something else. Still, it’s not a complete surprise, since Yeon layers on a fair amount of foreshadowing as things draw to a close, but the reveal nevertheless manages to land with emotional and narrative impact.

As good as is the rest of the cast, including Kwon Hae-hyo (Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula) as the elder Im Yeong-gyu, The Ugly belongs to Park Jeong-min, who in his two separate roles conveys a wealth of feeling through the simplest of gestures. His excellence elevates all the rest, especially as Dong-hwan. Even when the script occasionally devolves into heavy-handedness, his performance remains the star attraction.

– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)

2025 Toronto International Film Festival; Yeon Sang-ho; The Ugly movie review