Ryûsuke Hamaguchi originally intended Evil Does Not Exist to be a 30-minute short but realised somewhere along the way that he had the makings of a bigger film on his hands, one that’s part thriller, part meditation on (and manipulation of) audience sympathies. In a variation on the WB Yeats line “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met” – beloved of expat Irish bars – Hamaguchi seems to be saying that in the movies there are no bad guys, just characters we haven’t been introduced to properly. Get close and evil does not exist, just complexity. See also Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy for more on this.
First up, in what’s probably the original movie, a man chopping wood, filling water containers from a stream with his friend, stopping to taste wild wasabi on the way home. Later, out with his daughter, the same man, Takumi, instructing his daughter Hana on the difference between larch and pine, examining deer tracks in the snow. The wintry light is scattered by wild flowering grasses. Everything is bracingly crisp, idyllic. The good guy.
Cut to a meeting at a local hall, where representatives of a megacorporation are telling the locals about plans to build a site for “glamping” (they use the same word in Korean). It’ll be great for local employment. Its facilities will be available for the use of locals too. It won’t despoil the environment hardly at all. One of the locals pipes up with a question about the siting of a proposed septic tank. Won’t it contaminate the ground water? The not particularly impressive or well informed freelance gophers hired to allay locals’ concerns, Takahashi and Mayzumi, don’t seem to have solid answers to this one. The locals are not impressed. Where, they wonder, are the big wheels from the big corporation? Where is Mr Horiguchi, a capitalist clearly out only for profit.
Hamaguchi’s strange film looks like it’s going to be about nice Takumi and horrible Horiguchi – a battling underdog story – with Takahashi and Mayuzumi as walk-on henchmen in other characters’ stories. Instead, in what almost feels like the camera being grabbed by a different director, the focus swings on to the two gophers. Who they are. Where they come from. How come they have these jobs. They’re both single, we learn. Maybe they’re going to have some sort of romance. The conversation seems to be heading that way.
And then, yanked again, the weight of the movie shifts once more, to Takumi and the attempt by Horiguchi – who’s spotted that Takumi can swing local sympathy – to buy him off with offers of booze and a job as the glamping site’s caretaker. Until, another gear change, Takahashi announces that he’d like the caretaker job himself.
Everything shifts one more time when Takumi’s daughter Hana goes missing and the whole hotly contested issue of the glamping site – what the film is ostensibly about – is presented in stark relief. It’s not important at all.
What a strange film this is. Partly clear as day, partly impenetrable, its frequent changes of point of view mean its hard to get a proper bead on things. What story is it that Hamaguchi is telling here? Or is it a story about stories and the way they direct and misdirect? Evil Does Not Exist feels like a missing fourth segment from Hamaguchi’s 2021 compendium Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, the better of the two movies – both around three hours long – Hamaguchi delivered in 2021. Drive My Car was the other, and got all the love, maybe on account of the Beatles-referencing title, I don’t know.
Hitoshi Omika, Ryô Nishikawa, Ryûji Kosaka and Ayaka Shibutani play Takumi, Hana, Takahashi and Mayuzumi. In a largely non-professional cast, Kosaka is the standout. He actually does have some acting experience, though this is only his second role in eight years, in a screen career that goes no further back than that.
What will become of the daughter? Will Takumi take the job or will Takahashi? Will Horiguchi win out in the end by grinding down local opposition? Will Mayuzumi and Takahashi get it on? So many questions, so few of them answered. All I will say is that it’s worth staying around to the end of this peculiar movie, not because everything is answered and Hamaguchi tidies things up. But because he doesn’t do that and instead, as a parting shot, throws in yet another strange something. Audacious. Irritating, if you don’t go for it.
Evil Does Not Exist – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
