General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Evil Does Not Exist (悪は存在しない)

Evil Does Not Exist (悪は存在しない, Aku wa Sonzai Shinai) is a 2023 Japanese drama film directed and written by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, in which residents of a mountain hamlet near Tokyo confront a Tokyo company's plan to build a luxury glamping site that would damage their water supply and way of life. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 80th Venice International Film Festival and the FIPRESCI Award from the International Federation of Film Critics.¹^•² The film is Hamaguchi's follow-up to Drive My Car (2021), which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.³

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Ryusuke Hamaguchi; original concept by Hamaguchi and composer Eiko Ishibashi⁴
Runtime and format	106 minutes, color, 1.66:1, Japanese language⁵
Principal cast	Hitoshi Omika (Takumi), Ryo Nishikawa (Hana), Ryuji Kosaka (Takahashi), Ayaka Shibutani (Mayuzumi)⁴
Venice 2023	Grand Jury Prize (Silver Lion) and FIPRESCI Award¹^•²
Releases	Japan April 26, 2024; United States May 3, 2024 (limited), distributed by Sideshow and Janus Films⁶^•³
Critical reception	91% on Rotten Tomatoes (165 reviews); Metascore 83, "Universal Acclaim," from 40 critic reviews³^•⁷
Companion work	GIFT, a 74-minute silent re-edit of the same footage, performed live with Ishibashi's music⁸^•⁹

Spoilers

Plot

Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), a widowed handyman, lives with his eight-year-old daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) in the rural alpine hamlet of Mizubiki, not far from Tokyo, gathering water, wood, and wild wasabi for the local udon restaurant.³^•¹⁰ The townsfolk learn that a talent agency, Playmode, plans to build an opulent glamping site nearby, offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to the snowy wilderness.³

At a town meeting, two company representatives from Tokyo, Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani), pitch the plans while residents, including the village chief, point out flaws in the designs and the ecological impact on the local water supply; "Water always flows downhill," the chief says.¹⁰ Pressured by their boss in a Zoom meeting, the representatives return to persuade Takumi to serve as the camp's caretaker, and the film follows their growing, ambiguous relationship with him and his daughter.¹⁰ The final scenes end at the point of climax with a shocking act of violence and no closure, blending the fate of a child with that of a wounded fawn and recalling an earlier exchange in which Takumi asks where the deer the glamping site would displace would go.¹¹^•¹⁰

Origin and production

The film began as a collaboration with the musician and composer Eiko Ishibashi, who scored Drive My Car and asked Hamaguchi to create moving images she could use in her live performances.¹² The project developed into two independent works: the feature film Evil Does Not Exist and GIFT, a 74-minute silent film assembled from the same footage to accompany Ishibashi's live score.⁸^•⁹ Hamaguchi has said the main theme music was composed after the film was shot and edited, so the film was not built around pre-existing music.¹³

The production companies were NEOPA Inc. and Fictive LLC, with Satoshi Takata producing, Yoshio Kitagawa as director of photography, and Hamaguchi and Azusa Yamazaki editing.⁴ Hamaguchi filmed a wilderness setting about two hours from Tokyo, where Ishibashi works.¹⁴ He has said the title came into his mind while visiting the film's locations.¹⁵

Reception

At Venice 2023 the film took the Silver Lion, or Grand Jury Prize, behind Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things, as well as the FIPRESCI Award.¹^•² It was later voted Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival.¹¹ On Rotten Tomatoes it holds 91% from 165 reviews, with a critics consensus that it "stands on the battle lines between modern civilization and the natural world"; on Metacritic it scored 83, "Universal Acclaim," from 40 critic reviews.³^•⁷ Its United States theatrical gross was $829.6 thousand.³

Critical response was not uniform. Reviewers praised the film's meditative style, its long opening tracking shot through the forest, and Ishibashi's mournful score, while some found it slow or felt the abrupt ending left the film underdeveloped.¹⁰^•¹¹ The ending, which Hamaguchi has said came to him intuitively and which he has described as remaining mysterious even to him, has generated extensive discussion and interpretation.¹⁶^•¹⁰

Themes and interpretation

The film is commonly read as an ecological fable about the conflict between rural communities and urban development, and about humanity's relationship with nature.³^•¹⁷ The title itself carries deliberate ambiguity: it sometimes appears stylized with the word "Not" in red and the other words in white, hinting that if "Not" were crossed out it would read "Evil Does Exist."¹¹ Hamaguchi has described his aim as carefully depicting a perspective of "neither one nor the other," and has said a jarring ending causes audiences to reflect back on what they watched and question whether their worldview of it was correct.¹⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2023 and 2024 › Titles A to G

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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