In Evil Does Not Exist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s narrative functions as an ecosystem in its own right.
Two years after winning the Oscar for Drive My Car, Hamaguchi returns with a fable deeply rooted in the fragile balance of the natural world. On my first watch, the film’s ending didn’t evoke the same resonance as Drive My Car. Instead of offering a moment of emotional collapse, it left me with a lingering sense of ambiguity and confusion. Yet, over time—and through rewatching, discussing, and reflecting—my feelings about this film have only deepened. Its ending has quietly haunted me, as all great works do.
In an interview, Hamaguchi confessed that even he cannot fully unravel the ending of Evil Does Not Exist. Now, more than a year since I first wandered through its quiet mysteries—and knowing there will never be a singular canon to understand the soul of a masterpiece—I feel ready to offer my own reflection on this quiet yet profoundly haunting work.
In the quiet forest of Mizubiki, Takumi Yasumura (Hitoshi Omika) lives a modest life with his eight-year-old daughter, Hana (Ryo Nishikawa). Their days are spent in harmony with nature—chopping wood, collecting water from the forest stream, and occasionally making rare discoveries like wild wasabi.
This serenity is disrupted when the spectre of development looms over the village. Developers propose a glamping site, and at a tense community meeting, representatives Takahashi Keisuke (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi Yuuko (Ayaka Shibutani) present their plans. Yet the villagers, Takumi among them, stand united in opposition. They speak of environmental fragility—of sewage that could taint their pure groundwater—and accuse the developers of chasing profit at the expense of balance, leveraging fleeting pandemic subsidies to hasten their ambitions. Despite their resistance, the developers’ boss, Akira Horiguchi (Yoshinori Miyata), insists on forging ahead, instructing Takahashi and Mayuzumi to win Takumi over with gifts and the promise of work as the camp’s caretaker.
As Takahashi and Mayuzumi linger in Mizubiki, the village begins to weave its quiet magic on them. They start to see the interwoven fabric of life and land, its profound simplicity. Takahashi, in particular, finds himself drawn to Takumi, his resolve slowly giving way as he contemplates staying to learn from him. On a drive, Takumi shares a haunting truth about deer: though gentle by nature, a gut-shot deer, or its fiercely protective parent, can turn deadly when cornered. This unsettling revelation, combined with the distant gunshots that reverberate through the forest, casts an ever-growing shadow over the once peaceful landscape.
The narrative takes a dark turn when Hana goes missing, prompting a search through the forest. The optimism and tranquillity that defined the film’s earlier moments give way to a sudden shift in tone. The gunshots, which have haunted the story like spectral warnings, finally pierce the fragile balance, leading to an ambiguous and unsettling ending.
On the surface, the ending seemingly circles back to an earlier moment when the Tokyo agency proposes building the glamping site directly on a deer trail. “Where would the deer go?” Takumi asks. “Somewhere else, I guess,” a representative replies, casually brushing aside the significance of the question. But Takumi’s earlier words linger: an injured deer, unable to flee, will not retreat—it will fight.
To make sense of the film’s enigmatic ending, I decided to begin with its narrative structure, specifically, the shift in point of view (POV). The most noticeable change occurs in the screenplay, where the film transitions abruptly from the POV of Takahashi and the villagers to that of the Tokyo representatives. This shift, which marks the second act, initially caught me off guard. I had been deeply immersed in the villagers’ good-versus-evil narrative, only to find the narrative of the film broadened to encompass a more complex web of perspectives.
However, this shift in POV is not limited to the screenplay; it is woven into the film’s very fabric through its cinematography, directing, and editing. In interviews discussing Evil Does Not Exist, Hamaguchi mentions the idea of the “camera’s POV shots.” These shots are among the film’s most remarkable achievements, blurring the line between subjective, objective and POV perspectives and creating a sense of hallucination. For instance, a seemingly ordinary view of children playing turns out to be seen from a moving car, or a close-up of Yasumura’s face unexpectedly reveals itself as the POV of the wood he is chopping. Through meticulous editing and precise cinematography, Hamaguchi crafts an aesthetic that introduces the in-human POV of nature.
This approach underscores the film’s metanarrative, which operates less as a linear story and more as an ecosystem. This is not to say that individual narratives within the film lack structure—on the contrary, each character’s story is linear for themselves. However, by introducing “nature” or the “ecosystem” as an independent POV, separate from the binary of “good” villagers and “bad” intruders, Hamaguchi demonstrates a more profound truth: even in a world where humans act as though evil does not exist within them, harm is still done.
Thus, this ending and the gunshots echoing throughout the film serve as a haunting reminder of an unsettling truth: harm exists regardless of intent. Yasumura does not deliberately commit acts that are “evil” by human standards, yet his actions ripple through the ecosystem, perpetuating damage in ways he cannot fully perceive. The ecosystem, unlike human morality, does not judge—it simply reacts. Its logic is cyclical and interconnected, where every action inevitably affects others. It is not simply a matter of “what you do upstream will affect those living downstream,” because in this interconnected ecosystem, the distinctions between upstream and downstream cease to make sense.
In this shared web of existence, harm can emerge unpredictably. You may believe your path will never intersect with another’s, but in an ecosystem, separation is an illusion. In this sense, the film mirrors the sobering reality that those who suffer most from climate change are often not the ones responsible for it.
In this way, the ecosystem’s metanarrative disrupts the linear logic of human narratives, where causes are neatly tied to effects and retribution follows wrongdoing. Such logic often leads to the neglect of things that do not directly affect one, much like Yasumura ignoring the gunshots echoing through the forest. Instead, it is a natural consequence of co-existing within an intricate, interdependent system—one that neither condemns nor forgives but endures. Hamaguchi’s narrative challenges the audience to confront this uncomfortable reality: that we often let harm unfold if it does not confront us directly. This indifference, rooted in human detachment from the broader web of life, reveals the limits of our moral frameworks when viewed through the lens of the ecosystem’s metanarrative.
“Ryusuke Hamaguchi (HKAFF2018)” by Heiyinmatthewlois licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.