The Ugly (얼굴) Movie Review: Ugliness in All Forms

Yeon Sang-ho’s The Ugly begins as an examination of beauty, prejudice and cruelty, but plays out in a much more cynical fashion.

Park Jeong-min plays Dong-hwan, the son of Kwon Hae-hyo’s blind seal carver Yeong-gyu, whose reputation has earned him an interview with a TV journalist (Han Ji-hyeon). The artisan’s supposed disability has become his superpower – early on, he explains how his hands are his eyes. This all sets up nicely the theme of beauty and how it is perceived, especially with Dong-hwan’s mother conspicuous by her absence. Dong-hwan had been told that she’d abandoned the family when he was a baby, but the discovery of her dead body suggests foul play was involved in her disappearance. Thus commences the hunt for the truth and a gradual tonal shift from intimate drama to indulgent thriller.

The film is split into chapters, each constituted by a conversation Dong-hwan has with the people who knew his mother. They’re described in intertitles as ‘interviews’, as throughout his search for answers he is joined by Su-jin, the opportunistic hack who abandons her original project of documenting Hae-hyo’s craft in favour of this new mystery; in a film full of unpleasant characters, her elegant wolf in sheep’s clothing is perhaps the most effectively disconcerting. If there’s one takeaway we get from these interactions, it’s this: Dong-hwan’s mother was apparently very ugly.

Through flashbacks we learn the story of how the young Yeong-gyu, played by Park, met his wife, whom we mainly see from behind; her supposedly hideous face is obscured until the final moments. Each interview involves detailed expressions of disgust with characters laughing hysterically at the sheer monstrosity of the person nicknamed ‘Dung Ogre’ by her colleagues at the local factory. The mystery therefore extends beyond what happened to Dong-hwan’s mother as we are led to also wonder just how ugly this woman could have been. Not only is it tasteless to tease us with a buildup centred on someone’s physical appearance like this, but any eventual reveal, even one that intends to wrongfoot us, is going to be inevitably anticlimactic.

Pyo Sang-woo’s cinematography reflects the darkness of the screenplay with a desaturated colour palette and some smart noirish lighting à la David Fincher. The score from Chai Min-joo lurks artfully beneath the surface, though on occasion it explodes into inappropriate Hitchcockian melodrama that belies the seriousness of the subject matter. Most of the performances are serviceable, but Park stands out playing the dual role of Dong-hwan in the present day and his father in the past. Specifically in the former role, he is a welcome affable presence amid a tsunami of misanthropy.

No matter how well-crafted The Ugly is, it’s hard to invest in a story so needlessly cruel to its characters. If the original intent of the film was to denounce the ugliness of prejudice and female beauty standards, which I sincerely believe it was, then Yeon has gone about it all the wrong way. The premise paves the way for a compelling human drama, but the final product leans too far into its lurid thriller elements with a tone more suited to the director’s famous zombie movies. Ugly indeed.

The Ugly (얼굴) had its World Premiere at TIFF on September 9, 2025. The film will be released in US theatres on September 26, 2025.