Kashyap had the idea for the film since 2006 and started writing the script after talking to one of his friends, who was in the Special Task Force, Lucknow, about kidnapping cases.

The film's background score and music were composed by Brian McOmber and G. V. Prakash Kumar respectively, while Gaurav Solanki wrote the lyrics.

Shalini (Tejaswini Kolhapure) is a depressed housewife who attempts suicide but is interrupted by her ten-year-old daughter from her first marriage, Kali.

Shalini calls her husband, DCP (Detection) Shoumik Bose (Ronit Roy), asking for money, but he refuses.

Chaitanya (Vineet Kumar Singh) soon arrives and gives Rahul a film script and informs him that Kali was not in his car.

Bose taps Shalini's phone and listens to her conversation with Rakhee (Surveen Chawla), a B-grade film actress.

Jadhav tells Rahul to deliver the money to the kidnapper, but Chaitanya evades police interception and throws away his phone.

The police revisit the marketplace and talk to a woman who knew the toy seller and find out that they have a history of abducting children.

[6] Later, Kashyap met his friend Amit Pathak, who was the head of Special Task Force in Lucknow and talked to him about real life kidnapping cases and how they were tackled.

[5] The shocking thing for Kashyap to know from him was that in eighty five percent cases of kidnapping, there are no ransom calls, and are vendetta based abductions.

[6] He found a lot of parallels between Rahul Bhat's real life and his character in the film and hence gave him the role of a failed actor.

To prepare for his role, Bhat started consuming alcohol heavily and deprived himself of sleep to create dark circles around his character's face.

[5] The little girl in the film is named Kali (Hindi for bud), who, according to author Vaiju Naravane, represents "untouched innocence".

[21] Anshika Shrivastava, who played the character, was unaware of the story, and Kashyap requested her parents not to show her the film as he felt she was too young for the subject matter.

[4] The suburbs were difficult locations to shoot because of the constant crowd hence the team then decided to use hidden cameras to capture most of the original scenes, especially the ones that were shot at Bandra and Lonavala railway station.

[6] Ugly was edited by Aarti Bajaj and the sound mixing was done by the Mumbai-based audio engineer Mandar Kulkarni with assistance from Alok De.

[27] Such scenes as a road accident in the film were shot on different places and later merged using visual effects provided by Balakrishna P. Subbiah Nadar.

Kashyap fought this regulation stating, "it's the Health Ministry that should take the responsibility of curbing use of tobacco and work towards measures to control it and films should not be a medium to advertise non-smoking.

[40] A special screening of the film was held in Mumbai on 23 December 2014, which was attended by several actors including Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt.

[50] Kaushani Banerjee of Deccan Chronicle wrote: "Every frame has a dark undertone and Ugly does not conclude until every possible avenue of audience empathy is explored.

"[54] Meena Iyer of The Times of India gave a four-out-of-five star rating and said: "It's not for the faint-hearted, but for those who are willing to let the morally decrepit live.

"[56] Suprateek Chatterjee from HuffPost gave a positive review to the film and called Kashyap the "antithesis of Sooraj Barjatya".

"[58] Sonia Chopra of Sify gave a positive response and wrote: "Kashyap gives us a film that represents a disturbing reflection of life.

"[59] Contrary to the positive responses, a review from Bollywood Hungama wrote, "Watch it if you are an Anurag Kashyap fan, else avoid!".

[60] Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express giving the film a two-star-out-of five rating, wrote: "In all the to-ing and fro-ing, it starts feeling too long, and too much, without the requisite emotional pay-off.

"[61] Deepanjana Pal wrote in her review, "Ugly is a disappointment, not just because it's a whodunit that sinks like a badly-made souffle but also because we expect better and more of Kashyap.

"[62] Among overseas reviewers, Lee Marshall of Screen International called the film a "lazy kidnap caper" and felt the story was "too flabby".

[64] Maggie Lee from Variety gave a positive response and wrote :"[..] the grittily stylized film boasts a scattershot narrative that frustrates as much as it illuminates.

[65] It received a low occupancy and earned ₹4 million (US$46,000) on its opening day, which was mainly attributed to the limited release and small scale promotion.

[3] According to Rentrak, a global media measurement company, the film collected a total of ₹62.3 million (US$720,000) after the end of its theatrical run.