Trailers for the Korean Thriller THE UGLY From the Director of TRAIN TO BUSAN
A couple of trailers has been released for the upcoming Korean mystery thriller The Ugly, and it looks like it’s going to be an emotionally intense and chilling ride.
Premiering next month at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, this marks the latest project from acclaimed director Yeon Sang-ho, the filmmaker behind Train to Busan, Peninsula, and Hellbound. With The Ugly, Yeon shifts from large-scale spectacle to something more intimate and haunting.
Adapted from his own 2018 graphic novel, the film explores memory, moral ambiguity, and painful truths hidden beneath the surface of a fractured family history.
Starring Park Jeong-min and Kwon Hae-hyo, the story follows Im Dong-hwan, a man who convinces his blind father, Im Young-gyu, to participate in a documentary about his life as a master seal engraver.
But things take a dark turn when the remains of Dong-hwan's mother, long thought lost, are discovered after four decades. As the mystery unfolds, so do long-buried family secrets, revealing painful truths that have been hidden for years.
“Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min), having inherited his blind artisan father Yeong-gyu's seal engraving studio, persuades his father to star in a documentary about his life as a master of the craft who has overcome the limits of his disability.
“But the shoot takes an unexpected turn when the remains of their wife and mother are discovered after forty years. As Dong-hwan uncovers long-buried family secrets, he also unravels the story of a woman whose face has been erased from collective memory and remembered solely as an ‘ugly monster.’”
The Ugly is being presented as a Special Presentation at TIFF 2025 and was produced by Wow Point. Yeon continues to push genre boundaries, and this new film looks like a deeply personal and psychological journey.
As Yeon himself puts it, “Ugly things are scorned,” and with this story, he's ready to challenge the way we perceive beauty, trauma, and truth.