Perhaps it is best not to scratch your head about the film’s increasingly oblique meaning, but to simply try to enjoy the exquisite imagery, sound and music on its terms.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 17, 2025

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s film tops my list of “I’m not sure what this means but I can’t stop thinking about it” films this year.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 16, 2025

Evil Does Not Exist is yet another delicate, gentle picture from Hamaguchi that contains tidal waves of emotion underneath the surface waiting to crack through and overpower you.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 22, 2024

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist is a beautifully made film, with a few scenes that hint at an an intriguing & compelling story within, but unfortunately he has quite a lot of trouble keeping the focus where it needs to be.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 16, 2024

Hamaguchi has provided us with two competing philosophies of what it means to live off the land, one symbiotic and one parasitic.

| Dec 11, 2024

While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Drive My Car, Evil Does Not Exist nonetheless prides itself on deeper introspection that may not have the same sweeping scope but is no less ambitious.

| Original Score: A | Oct 16, 2024

Hamaguchi recovers his naturalistic poetics to highlight, with refined aesthetics, a moving drama about the connection between human beings and nature. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 17, 2024

The framing, light, sound, and performances of Evil Does Not Exist work in deft harmony. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 12, 2024

A film where nature, and not just human nature, has a place. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 12, 2024

Ryusuke Hamaguchi ... works his usual magic, in which a seemingly ordinary conversation in a car is as riveting as anything on a battlefield. But then he shifts gears at the end, hammering his point home through forced metaphor.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 10, 2024

Nostalgic and dark, the return to nature seems to propose a possible return to that state of nature... [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 9, 2024

There’s a marvelous simplicity to this film and the storytelling that frames its content in a fascinating way.

| Original Score: B | Jul 24, 2024

Puzzling but poetic, happenings accrue and then settle into sensations that are nightmarish and cannot be shaken.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Jul 4, 2024

Who knows if the world will still exist by that point? Hamaguchi seems to think so and bless his staggering faith in humanity, even if we don’t deserve it.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jul 3, 2024

Hamaguchi mostly operates with this entrancing, redolent realism, yet at the same time it plays out like a fable, all the way down to Hana invoking the likes of LIttle Red Riding Hood as she frolics through the forest alone.

| Original Score: A+ | Jun 17, 2024

A contemplative and enigmatic eco-fable that reflects on the fragile balance between humans and nature. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 14, 2024

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new film, an eco-thriller set in a sylvan Japanese town, explores the messy entanglements of human, machine, and nature that make up planetary existence.

| Jun 13, 2024

A suspenseful but enigmatic ecological drama.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 12, 2024

Funny and human in ways we’ve come to expect from Hamaguchi, but with uneasy undercurrents that grow more sinister as the film wears on.

| Jun 3, 2024

A film of deceptive simplicity that fascinates, puzzles and sometimes irritates, in the process inviting reflection and discussion afterward.

| Original Score: B+ | May 30, 2024