Evil Does Not Exist: An eco-thriller with hidden horrors | review and analysis

Ryo Nishikawa in Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist. Playing at the 2023 New York Film Festival.

NYFF 2023 | A small town tucked in the mountains of Japan has to decide whether or not to allow a company to build a new luxury campsite in Evil Does Not Exist

With a tense atmosphere underscoring the smart but human-level eco-drama, Evil Does Not Exist works exceedingly well as an engrossing but surprisingly entertaining climate allegory.

Evil Does Not Exist is playing at the 2023 New York Film Festival.

Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi is unafraid to include silences in his movies. Not just a lack of dialogue but those lapses in conversations. Like when you're in a car and you and the passenger find a comfortable silence as you watch the world fly by around you. It was a feature in his U.S. breakout Drive My Car, which earned him nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, and now in his follow-up Evil Does Not Exist. But the way in which he deploys those silences are different. Where Drive My Car found longing and grief in meditative moments, Evil Does Not Exist finds dread. Often while characters speak during long car rides through the Japanese mountainside, the camera will face out the rear windshield. Like something is chasing the characters. Sometimes the camera will navigate the eerie quiet of the snow-covered Japanese forest as Eiko Ishibashi's sometimes jazzy, sometimes orchestral, sometimes guttural and discordant score plays underneath.

It's foreboding, especially for a movie that on its surface doesn't seem to be about any horrors. The picturesque mountain village of Mizubiki is a tight-knit community. “Odd job man” Tatsumi (Hitoshi Omika) lives a peaceful existence in his forest cabin with his daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa). His riveting daily routine involves wood chopping, water collecting (from a stream, of course), and deer hunting. All usually with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. However, his, and the town, are confronted with usurpers from the outside world when a company presents a plan to build a glamping camp on the outskirts of the town.

In a tense (and darkly hilarious) town hall meeting, the company representatives Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) present the plan to a less than enthusiastic crowd. It's like watching a film festival Q&A for a movie no one liked (if you know you know). There are those flashes of bleak humor that make Evil Does Not Exist surprisingly entertaining amidst the drama. The townsfolk are wary of the plan. Especially Tatsumi who specifically cites the danger of contamination to the village's water supply. Of course, rather than listening to their concerns, the powers-that-be at the company push Takahashi and Mayuzumi to convince (and bribe) the citizens. Thus setting off a slow-burn corporate eco-thriller that never quite shows you its hand, until it does.

Hamaguchi practices incredible patience with his storytelling allowing each piece of the puzzle to fall into place. Whether it's a story piece or a character one. While there's a central plot, the real interest of Evil Does Not Exist is within its people. There's Tatsumi, a steadfast father both to Hana and figuratively to the village, Takahashi and Mayuzumi, initially seen as corporate drones who we begin to learn more about, Sachi (Hazuki Kikuchi) and Kazuo (Hiroyuki Miura), the owners of the town's single restaurant. As each of them move around each other, we learn not just about their character but also how they interact with a changing world around them.

At just shy of two hours, it is nowhere near the epic scale of Drive My Car. The story feels smaller, more insular, and, in the end, more allegorical. But when its stunning and thrilling final scenes play out, you understand exactly where Hamaguchi's mind is. It's with the Earth. It's with the people that inhabit it. And it's with the way that we destroy it. Without feeling preachy or overwrought, he makes a swift and compelling case for care. Both for each other and the place we call home.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.