TIFF 2025 Review: The Ugly

Going into The Ugly, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) is known for mixing genre thrills with social commentary, but this one feels completely different it’s smaller in scale but way more personal, and honestly, way heavier.

The story follows Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min), who suddenly finds out his mother’s remains have been discovered decades after her disappearance. Imagine being told the parent you never really knew was buried in a mountain for 40 years and then everyone around you either dodges your questions or tells you she was “ugly.” That word keeps coming up, and not in the way you’d think.

This isn’t a flashy thriller with jump scares or big twists every ten minutes. Instead, it’s like peeling back old wounds piece by piece. Through interviews, memories, and fragments of the past, we start to understand not just what happened to her, but how a whole family  even a whole community ,chose silence over truth.

Park Jeong-min is incredible here. He has to carry so much emotion as you can literally see him shift from grief to admiration to disbelief, sometimes in a single scene. What stuck with me most wasn’t the mystery itself but what it was really saying: the “ugly” isn’t this woman, it’s the cruelty of the people around her. It’s how easy it is for society to dismiss someone, to erase them, and then act like they never mattered. That hit me way harder than I expected.

The Ugly isn’t the kind of movie that gives you closure or relief. It’s slow, unsettling, and it leaves you sitting with some really uncomfortable truths. But that’s also what makes it worth watching.

Watch the trailer for The Ugly below

Well Go USA releases The Ugly in theatres Sept 26th, 2025