Rating: NR | Runtime: 106 minutes
Release Date: April 26th, 2024 (Japan) / May 3rd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Incline / Janus Films / Sideshow Releasing
Director(s): Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Writer(s): Ryûsuke Hamaguchi / Ryûsuke Hamaguchi & Eiko Ishibashi (concept)

I will stay. It will be my last task.

Started as a collaboration between Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and composer Eiko Ishibashi, Evil Does Not Exist is as much a standalone work as it is a companion piece. Gift is the original: a live performance of Ishibashi’s music played against a silent film Hamaguchi built from the footage (mostly alternate takes) that he then filled out for this feature. He speaks about asking Ishibashi’s permission as a result since he was ultimately the hired hand now seeking to create something new. She agreed and inevitably supplied the score.

The narrative concerns itself with its characters more than plot. Set in Mizubiki Village, near Tokyo, we meet Takumi (Hitoshi Omika, a crewmember on Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy) as he goes about his usual day of chopping wood and collecting large jugs of fresh spring water to provide to his fellow villagers upstream. He’s a nature expert who teaches his daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) about the trees and animals to the point where she often wanders off after daycare to explore the forest on her way home alone. The community is tight-knit and collaborative, helping each other preserve the beauty and sanctity of this land.

Enter Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani)—employees of a talent agency pursuing a post-COVID government subsidy by proposing to build a glamping site in Mizubiki so city folk have a quietly serene place to unwind and escape their lives (in other words, pay to do whatever they want before going back home, leaving their waste and pollution behind). Obviously a scheme to collect fast cash, these representatives (both admittedly assigned the job of holding court with the village rather than actually qualified for it) meet a well-versed and very proactive group ready to explain how poorly planned their project is and how devastating it proves to Mizubiki’s survival.

Hamaguchi isn’t one to blindly devolve things into “good vs bad” regardless of his characterizations making it easy to choose who should fall in each category. He instead presents them as opposing forces with the potential for common ground against a wholly different entity: Mother Nature. Whereas the talent agency sees this land as an untapped resource to be torn up and repurposed for profit, the village knows it as a place worth preserving. Not only that, however, they know that any fight they might possess to protect their water source from this project’s insufficient septic system pales in comparison to the fight the land and animals will put forth to defend themselves from mankind’s greed.

That is where the title enters. Much like Takumi’s description of wild deer being docile and thus not a threat (despite the glamping site targeting a deer trail for construction), evil does not inherently live within the hearts of God’s creatures … unless. The word lingers in the air before he tells Takahashi and Mayuzumi that all bets are off if that creature feels threatened or finds itself injured and unable to flee. If you back that shy animal into a corner, it will fight back. Not for vengeance or violence, but to survive. And human beings are no different. They will try to be civil. They will try to educate outsiders about the error of their ways. But, push comes to shove, they’ll use force to protect their own.

It leads to a surprising yet authentic final scene—a contrasting bookend of foreboding horror opposite Hana’s bright snowy walk in the opening. Hamaguchi sprinkles bits and pieces throughout the runtime to prepare us for this eventual collision between security and helplessness whether Hana constantly roaming into the forest by herself or the distant sounds of gunshots. The village false assumes harmony can be preserved despite the constant threat of external forces because, as Takumi admits earlier on, this community is still young. They’re all outsiders doing their best to find balance. In the end, nature will take matters into its own hands and its victims might not always be those who deserve it.

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Hitoshi Omika and Ryo Nishikawa in EVIL DOES NOT EXIST; courtesy of Sideshow/Janus.