Review: 'Evil Does Not Exist' takes us into the woods, and into a dispute between locals and a corporation that's darker than you expect

I don’t know if evil exists or doesn’t, and I don’t know why writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi put the title “Evil Does Not Exist” on his new movie — but I’m glad that he and the movie exist, to let viewers like me chew over such questions.

The movie is set in a rural village in the mountains, which is a short drive from Tokyo but feels quite alien from those city sensibilities. Hamaguchi first introduces us to Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) and his daughter, Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), who’s maybe 8 years old. A typical day has Takumi chopping firewood and performing odd jobs around the village, then picking Hana up from daycare, and the two of them exploring the woods near their house. Takumi knows everything about every tree and is imparting that wisdom to Hana.

One day, Takumi is among the locals attending a town meeting, where two corporate representatives are presenting details about a plan to build a “glamping” campsite in the woods near the village. The reps — Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) — think they can impress the locals with talk of the economic benefit of rich Tokyo tourists coming to their area. But the residents, Takumi included, are unhappy about the details, like whether the tourists will make noise late at night and start wildfires, or whether the septic tank will spill pollution into the groundwater and taint the drinking water downstream. (Among his many odd jobs, Takumi collects stream water for his friends who run an udon restaurant, so the pollution issue is also about his livelihood.)

Ultimately, the residents catch on that the reps have no authority, and were actually hired by a talent agency to act out the roles of competent glad-handers. When Takahashi and Mayuzumi report back to the slick CEO and his condescending consultant, the CEO has an idea: Try to hire Takumi as caretaker for the clamping site. So the reps head back to the village to try to convince Takumi.

I won’t say much more about what happens next — except to say that the ending is confounding and will have me thinking about things for a long time. The ending also doesn’t fit the mold of your typical story of city slickers discovering the hidden wisdom of the folks living in the sticks. Actually, it doesn’t fit any mold at all.

Hamaguchi wowed the world with “Drive My Car,” a three-hour drama about grief and theater that won the Oscar for international feature film in 2022. Though “Evil Does Not Exist” is radically different from that one, but one can feel how in both films Hamaguchi is resetting the audience’s expectations and even the way we’re supposed to experience the passage of time. The opening shot of this movie is an unbroken four-minute pan, looking up through the trees at a gray sky. Hamaguchi is telling us to be patient, to let the movie work on its own schedule and rhythms — and when it does, the results are genuinely moving and fascinating.

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‘Evil Does Not Exist’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 17, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for some violence and language. Running time: 106 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.