Evil Does Not Exist. 2024. Japan. Written and directed by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi. With Hotoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka. DCP courtesy Sideshow. In Japanese; English subtitles. 106 min.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to Drive My Car (2022) dares to defy audience expectations by shifting away from his Oscar-winning film’s eloquent, literary qualities and focusing on the silent, menacing unraveling of human relationships. In Evil Does Not Exist, a Tokyo startup company identifies a parcel of untouched rural land for a new glamping project, and forces its way into the local community with corporate propaganda and dubious promises of environmental compliance. Hamaguchi refuses to limit his film to a collision of two worlds, a critique of corporate greenwashing, or family dramas provoked by the arrival of outsiders. Instead, the film leaves us to ponder the obscure causes and consequences of communal disintegration, haunting us with an inscrutable menace behind tranquil images of a fragile social contract.