Evil Does Not Exist

As he's done before, Hamaguchi gives us characters who are too complicated and richly drawn to be reduced to any one type. Yet that doesn't explain how hauntingly different this movie feels from his other work.

It does reflect some of the struggles in modern Japan between rural and urban, but I thought it was a little bit too slow and not up to par.

In its own discreet, modest way, Evil Does Not Exist leaves us with a haunting sense of personal and ecological apocalypse.

Lingering shots of nature set to Ishibashi’s beautiful, often unnerving score reinforce the idea of two converging forces, not necessarily in conflict, but independent nonetheless, the music imbuing emotional layers while maintaining its discreteness.

I had no idea where Hamaguchi’s cautionary tale was taking me, but I remained intrigued until the bitter end.

Hamaguchi peers under the mossy rock of humanity and finds a simmering “evil” that exists within us all and it’s one that has the potential to destroy everything in its path.

If Drive My Car was the tragedy of a modern man, Evil Does Not Exist is modern man’s comeuppance, served magnificently chilled.

Despite the artsy style, the narrative is missing the ambiguities and complexities of a high-level art-house movie.

Evil Does Not Exist leans toward a folk-horror tradition, as Hamaguchi slowly pivots away from dispassionate naturalism, building to an impressionistic, opaque finale

All of this may sound prosaic, but winds of mystery blow through the film as Hamaguchi skillfully and subtly...