Cook review: ‘Evil Does Not Exist’ is challenging, enigmatic

I’m not entirely sure what every segment of this movie means. Nor do I pretend to understand its title.

I do know that “Evil Does Not Exist” will entertain audiences who enjoyed the Oscar-winning “Drive My Car,” by the same director, Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

It’s baffling in many ways, and it is not for action-film fans or viewers who want their conclusions tied up neatly. It’s for audiences who want to be challenged by a film – the kind of work that lends itself to in-depth conversations after a viewing.

The film opens with … trees. A canopy of trees is all we see for several minutes. Nature is all that exists overhead.

That is, until we see Takumi (Hitoshi Omika,) who is splitting wood at the cabin where he lives in a remote area of the forest. Takumi is a bit of an oddball who regularly forgets to pick up his daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) from school.

Takumi and many other residents of the small community gather to hear two representatives of a corporation that wants to start a glamping business (glamping is short of glamorous camping) upstream of where the residents live. The representatives realize they are meeting much more resistance than they bargained for.

This is a film with sparse dialogue, a jolting, bizarre finale, and a beautifully melancholy score by Eiko Ishibashi, whose original concept was the basis of the movie. The performances are wonderful.

The silence within the film makes the ending even more unsettling.

In an apparent nod to “Seven Samurai,” one of the representatives asks if he, too, can chop wood like Takumi.

Each viewer, I think, will develop an interpretation of what the movie means. I think it’s a sort of humans-versus-nature story about how, whenever humans interfere with nature, nature will seek its own revenge, maybe on the next generation.

But you might have a different interpretation.

3 ½ stars

Running time: One hour and 46 minutes.

At The Last Picture House, Davenport.

Watch the trailer here.

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