Review: Evil Does Not Exist

Director:  Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Stars:  Hitoshi Omika, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani

Slow-burn rural-set foreign language films that centre on supremely well-scripted townhall meetings don’t come along all the time, so it’s weirdly lucky for us all that Evil Does Not Exist has arrived within a year of R.M.N.. Throw in the odds that such a film will end on an abrupt, beguiling note in which man is confronted by a wild animal, and the chances diminish further. Truly, then, we are blessed.

Yet in truth the latest from Ryusuke Hamaguchi falls quite far from Cristian Mungui’s treaty on rising nationalism in Romania. This tale – built from the bones of an experiment with making a wordless short film – instead takes aim at foolhardy gentrification, and the calamitous imbalance caused by man in pursuit of a fast buck. Evil Does Not Exist is a patiently-paced eco-drama, one that feels as though it is dallying to begin with, only to reveal an almost perfectly structured set of pay-offs and recurrences in its second half. With it’s unhurried pace, coy structure, setting and sinister sense of foreboding, it almost feels like (brace yourselves for a David Ehrlichism*) Kelly Reichardt’s Twin Peaks: The Return. A patiently sprawling fable of darkness within beauty.

Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) lives off of the land with his young daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) on the fringes of a village called Harasawa. The region, close to the mountainous apexes of Japan, survives thanks to a natural spring which Takumi gathers water from to distribute among the townsfolk. An investment group from Tokyo threatens to upend this harmony by proposing a glamping site above the settlement. Thus the town meeting, where a pair of ill-equipped talent agency recruits – Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) – find themselves lost in the face of the locals’ reasonable concerns about the rush-job presentation, particularly pollutant run-off from a cost-effective septic tank.

It might not sound like high-drama, but having bedded us into this world quietly, the unfolding clash has credence and consequence. Most keenly the community presented here recalls the one found in Kelly Reichardt’s (underrated) eco-thriller Night Moves, and the tone of the piece is kindred to that film, minus the Hitchcockian suspense angle. Yet Hamaguchi feathers in some canny disquiet via Eiko Ishibashi’s spidery score (which features contributions from Jim O’Rourke). It trembles beneath the picture and occasionally provides a kind of jump-scare when it bottoms out before a scene has ended, leaving the viewer feeling precariously suspended. It’s a sonic precursor to the sudden shunt of the more menacing finale.

Hamaguchi’s celebrated Drive My Car burrowed into the world of Chekhov, sometimes for lengthy periods, and Evil Does Not Exist presents some playful red herrings surrounding his most famous motif; the gun on the wall. Early on we hear the cracking reports of distant rifle fire from deer hunters some miles away, and that threat gets back-pocketed for later. The last act also seems peppered with omens. A tale of deer fighting back. A slice of red across an open palm from an injury in the woods. An ice hole in a frozen lake. All feel like harbingers, and we come to feel at the mercy of Hamaguchi. Which will he weaponise? One? All?

Overall Evil Does Not Exist works like a trap, snapping shut only in its last moments, providing a stark warning about pushing communities too far, cornering folk with no recourse to protect themselves. There isn’t so much evil here as laziness. The company behind the glamping project aren’t trying to harm the people of Harasawa intentionally, rather they’re not thinking of them at all, reacting instead to deadlines for subsidies. Pressures of commerce, that unending and abstract devil.

On the journey Hamaguchi relaxes into some Lynchian time-stretching sequences. Little oases within his modest but captivating narrative. So it’s perfectly fine to spend minutes watching Takumi chop wood, or to take a languid ride in the backseat as Takahashi and Mayazumi discuss dating apps. This latter feathers in character and contrast, revealing the relative pace of their urbanised lives. Evil Does Not Exist turns out to be something of a three-way character piece between these two and Takumi. All three actors excel, but it is Omika who feels like the movie’s stoic mascot, reminiscent of Lee Kang-sheng in so many of Tsai Ming-liang’s films; a quietly intense presence who makes any activity inherently interesting.

There’s also some sly humour from Hamaguchi here. In terms of form and little experiments with the camera and framing, and particularly a scene in which he presents the film’s only truly loathsome character positioned in blithe mimicry of some wall-art directly behind him. Through this the impatient capitalist is mocked. Hamaguchi smirks, reaffirming his position.

The end may confound some (though perhaps not nearly as much as the aforementioned Mungui’s), but it also feels in some way strangely inevitable. Amid a dark panic redolent of György Fehér’s 1990 masterpiece of rural malaise Twilight, frustration and opportunity coalesce into a moment of action that’s only tragic. We are left in the audience as phantom spectators. Invisible deer caught in Hamaguchi’s headlights.

*I actually really like David Ehrlich and don’t get the hate that often flies his way. Go watch all of his end of year Top 25 video countdowns right now.