Evil Does Not Exist
Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a camping site near Takumi's house offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to nature.
Critics Sentiment
Camera pans skyward through Mizubiki winter tree canopy
Takumi tackles and chokes Takahashi unconscious as Hana lies motionless in the field
The film drops sharply from the tense but visually arresting deer-field discovery (7.4) to the abrupt, widely criticised ending in which Takumi chokes Takahashi and Hana lies motionless (5.2), a swing of 2.2 points driven by near-universal reviewer frustration with the unresolved, jarring finale.
Evil Does Not Exist opens at its emotional peak with a mesmerising forest canopy sequence and sustains strong appreciation through its community meeting and humanising character work, before a gradual plateau in the middle section gives way to a divisive, abrupt ending that polarised audiences and dragged the overall score below the film's technical and atmospheric achievements. The arc is one of slow-burn admiration followed by a contested collapse at the finish line, with the film's greatest strength — Hamaguchi's ability to make mundane dialogue compelling — never quite compensating for the structural and tonal rupture of its final minutes.
Crew
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