If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Silence of the Lambs was left out in the rain, chewed on by possums, and then rewritten by a moody teenager who just discovered Edgar Allan Poe, wonder no more. The Ugly (1997), New Zealand’s proud contribution to the “serial killers are soooo deep” subgenre, is a grimy, self-serious mess dressed up as an art film. It’s a psychological horror movie that thinks it’s smarter than it is, which is kind of like your drunk uncle at Christmas explaining Bitcoin while wearing his shirt inside out.
The Setup: Therapy, but Make It Edgy
The story revolves around Simon Cartwright (Paolo Rotondo), a serial killer who wants to convince a psychiatrist he’s cured. Enter Dr. Karen Shumaker (Rebecca Hobbs), who looks like she wandered in from an after-school special and just decided to stay. She’s called to an asylum that makes Arkham Asylum look like a Sandals resort. The head doctor (Roy Ward) is a crusty old cliché who might as well twirl his mustache every time he warns her not to get “too involved.”
And from there? Flashbacks. Lots and lots of flashbacks. Childhood trauma, an abusive mother, and a string of murders presented in moody montages with the subtlety of a sledgehammer dipped in pig’s blood.
Simon Says… Kill?
Let’s talk about Simon. Paolo Rotondo plays him with the energy of a man who watched Anthony Hopkins on VHS a dozen times and said, “Yeah, I can do that, but with more brooding stares and greasy hair.” His whole shtick is that he’s haunted by “The Ugly”—his murderous alter ego that whispers in his head. The movie desperately wants this to be profound. Instead, it lands like an angsty My Chemical Romance lyric scribbled in the margins of a high school notebook.
Simon’s murders are filmed like perfume commercials directed by someone who just discovered red lighting gels. Victims scream in slow motion while Simon gazes into the middle distance like a depressed Calvin Klein model. It’s horror for people who think wearing all black is a personality trait.
Dr. Karen: Portrait of a Bad Career Choice
Rebecca Hobbs as Dr. Shumaker is meant to be our moral center, but she mostly alternates between furrowing her brow and making really bad professional decisions. She ignores every red flag, every warning, and every basic rule of psychiatry until—shock!—she ends up dead. She’s less a doctor and more a walking example of how not to do your job.
Imagine Clarice Starling if she had no instincts, no charisma, and thought “profiling” meant listening politely while a murderer explains his trauma. That’s Dr. Karen. She doesn’t so much investigate Simon as she auditions to be his next victim. Spoiler alert: she gets the part.
The Asylum: Discount Haunted House
The asylum is so over-the-top grim that it becomes unintentionally hilarious. Every hallway looks like it was designed by someone who thought spilled gravy counted as a wall treatment. The orderlies, Philip and Robert, are cartoon bullies straight out of a prison exploitation flick—they exist solely to beat Simon up until he inevitably slaughters them. It’s less a psychiatric institution and more a Scooby-Doo villain lair with less competent security.
Mommy Issues: The Horror Equivalent of “We Need to Talk About Freud”
The film spends an inordinate amount of time on Simon’s abusive childhood. His mother (Jennifer Ward-Lealand) is such an on-the-nose caricature of maternal cruelty that you half expect her to sprout horns and hiss like a cat. She ruins his relationship with his only love, Julie, screams a lot, and then gets murdered for her trouble.
It’s all meant to be harrowing and psychological. Instead, it feels like a community-theater production of Oedipus Rexwith extra blood packs. “He kills because his mother was mean” is about as groundbreaking as saying water is wet.
The Ugly… Duckling?
Here’s the kicker: the movie frames Simon’s alter ego as an allusion to The Ugly Duckling. Yes, really. The killer kills because he’s ugly inside, and society never accepted him, and blah blah blah. Somewhere Hans Christian Andersen is rolling in his grave, probably trying to beat Scott Reynolds with a candlestick for daring to connect his bedtime story to this dreck.
By the time Simon whispers about “The Ugly” like it’s some grand cosmic force, you’re less scared and more annoyed. The Ugly isn’t a terrifying psychological concept—it’s just a fancy name for “bad impulse control.”
The Visuals: Art School Dropout Vibes
Let’s talk style. The cinematography is drenched in shadows, harsh reds, and slow-motion shots of blood dripping in sinks. It’s the kind of thing that looks cool in a student reel but collapses under the weight of a 90-minute runtime. There are moments when the film seems more interested in being a Nine Inch Nails music video than telling a coherent story.
The editing is equally migraine-inducing—every flashback is cut like a trailer for itself, complete with disjointed screams, broken mirrors, and enough Dutch angles to make you seasick.
The Ending: Well, Obviously
And then, of course, the inevitable: Simon kills the orderlies, escapes the asylum, and offs Dr. Karen. It’s supposed to be shocking. But after 90 minutes of telegraphing that exact outcome, it’s like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat you’ve already seen him stuff the rabbit into. By the time the credits roll, you’re less horrified and more relieved it’s over.
Why It’s Ugly (Pun Absolutely Intended)
The Ugly thinks it’s a serious psychological exploration of evil. What it actually is:
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Derivative. It’s basically Silence of the Lambs if Hannibal Lecter was replaced with a mopey guy in a Hot Topic catalog.
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Pretentious. The symbolism is laid on so thick you could trowel it off the walls.
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Boring. For a movie about a serial killer, the pace is slower than a snail on sedatives.
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Unscary. “The Ugly” as a concept is about as frightening as a goth kid’s poetry slam.
Sigourney Weaver once said horror films are only scary if you believe the people in them are real. Nobody in The Uglyfeels remotely real—they’re just cardboard archetypes wandering around a discount asylum set.
Final Thoughts
At best, The Ugly is a curiosity: a New Zealand attempt at arthouse horror that managed to get festival nods by virtue of looking bleak enough to pass as profound. At worst, it’s 93 minutes of faux-psychological drivel wrapped in music-video visuals and delivered with the emotional nuance of a drunk mime.
If you want a movie about the darkness inside the human soul, watch Se7en. If you want to see a psychiatrist square off against a killer, watch Silence of the Lambs. If you want to waste 90 minutes on a pretentious slog that confuses bad lighting for atmosphere, then by all means, watch The Ugly.
