Yeon Sang-ho’s ‘The Ugly’ Arrives on Digital March 10 from Well Go USA

A buried truth resurfaces in Yeon Sang-ho’s haunting drama The Ugly.

Yeon Sang-ho’s The Ugly Heads to Digital March 10 via Well Go USA

From one of modern genre cinema’s most uncompromising voices comes a very different kind of horror.

The Ugly, the latest film from Yeon Sang-ho—the filmmaker behind Train to Busan and Peninsula—will debut on digital platforms March 10, courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment. While Yeon is best known internationally for large-scale apocalyptic terror, this new project turns inward, delivering a tragic, intimate drama rooted in generational guilt, buried trauma, and long-delayed truth.

The film follows Im Dong-hwan, a documentary filmmaker whose life is upended when he learns that his mother—missing for four decades—has finally been found. Her remains are discovered in a remote area, reopening wounds that never healed. Seeking answers, Dong-hwan turns to the only person who might know the truth: his blind father.

What begins as grief quickly mutates into suspicion. Rumors surrounding his mother’s life—and her death—suggest she was marginalized, misunderstood, and possibly the victim of something far more sinister than an accident. As Dong-hwan digs deeper, the film peels back layers of denial, shame, and silence, revealing a family history shaped as much by what was hidden as what was lost.

The trailer hints at a slow-burn unraveling—less about shocks and more about the psychological weight of discovery. This is Yeon Sang-ho working in a quieter register, but the intensity remains, channeled through moral reckoning rather than spectacle.

The Ugly stars Park Jeong-min (Harbin, Dr. Cheon and Lost Talisman), alongside Kwon Hae-hyo, Shin Hyun-been, Im Seong-jae, and newcomer Han Ji-hyeon.

The film premiered as an official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025 and went on to receive 10 nominations at the 2025 Blue Dragon Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay—further cementing it as one of the year’s most critically recognized Korean films.

For collectors, The Ugly will also arrive on Blu-ray™ and DVD exclusively through Amazon on May 26.

This isn’t a monster movie. It’s something colder—and arguably more disturbing. A story about what families choose to forget, what communities quietly erase, and how the truth, no matter how long it’s buried, always finds a way back to the surface.

The Ugly arrives on digital March 10.