Exit 8 Movie Review

Exit 8 will hit U.S. theaters on April 10.

Exit 8 may not look like it at first glance, but it is in fact based on a video game. That would be The Exit 8, a 2023 indie game by developer Kotake Create, which features a first-person protagonist trapped in a never-ending subway station hallway. The object of the game is to check the hallway for potential “anomalies” (ranging from misplaced doorknobs to something trying to kill you), and only turning the corner at the far side if nothing is amiss. It’s the exact kind of high-concept minimalist fare that works well as a short interactive diversion, basically a one-idea experiment that can be packaged as a bite-sized game experience. But as a movie? I’m afraid it’s stretched far too thin.

Coming from director Genki Kawamura and screenwriter Kentaro Hirase, Exit 8 stars Kazunari Ninomiya as the Lost Man, a hapless fellow who’s just been informed that his girlfriend is pregnant and is unsure about how to handle the situation. After disembarking his train, the Lost Man gets, well, lost in the station and winds up in the aforementioned endless hallway. He realizes not as quickly as you might expect that he’s become trapped in a nightmare time-and-space loop where he needs to correctly assess the hallway for anomalies eight times in a row before he can escape, or else have his progress reset to zero after a single mistake. No points for guessing that he doesn’t get it right on the first try!

If that premise sounds like it wouldn’t have enough meat for a feature-length film, you’d be correct. If the player is attentive, the game can be completed in a mere 10 to 15 minutes, and there’s little replay value beyond trying to see all the possible anomalies. The film version by necessity has to add more stuff to pad out the runtime, so it invents not just more backstory and an existential crisis for the Lost Man, but also other characters who exist in parallel to his journey. I won’t spoil who else gets involved, but there are a small handful of other faces who provide alternate perspectives on what it’s like to be stuck in this subterranean purgatory. Even then, it’s not enough to make up for how anemic the film feels.

Since the game is essentially an abstract art piece about exploring a hostile liminal space, it doesn’t have anything resembling a conventional narrative. To make up the difference, the film makes the Lost Man’s journey about him coming to terms with the responsibility of potential fatherhood, an emotional arc that struggles to cohere because the hallway experience doesn’t synergize with it in a satisfying way. In the game, the hallway had no reason for it to be the way that it is; in the film, the hallway is basically there to torment the Lost Man so that he learns a moral lesson, similar to the way the town of Silent Hill treats the various protagonists that wander into its fog-covered streets. But what does spotting misaligned light fixtures or posters with moving eyes have to do with impending parental duties? The film doesn’t really have an answer.

That’s not to say Exit 8 is devoid of care or craft. The hallway is a remarkable achievement in visual fidelity, looking almost identical to its game counterpart. It manages to remain engaging as a cinematic environment even as the story strains to come up with enough complications to get over the finish line. The cinematography invites the audience to search the corners of the frame for potential anomalies, with multiple instances where I saw something out of place well before the Lost Man did. Yet that also adds more frustration to the viewing experience, because quite frankly, the Lost Man sucks at this. Watching him bumble his way through the hallway, missing obvious clues and screwing himself over and over again can make Exit 8 feel like watching someone else play a video game but being terrible at it. That can be tense in its own way, but I can’t imagine it was the kind of tension that was intended.

Still, there are moments where Exit 8 does come to life. The performances are good even if the script keeps the characters vague by design. The film is low on conventional scares, but there are sequences where it transcends its tedious plotting and uses the anomaly system to genuinely unnerve the viewer. It’s easy to imagine a 30-minute short film version of this that’s a real winner, one that uses all the juice in the premise’s tank at a faster rate and ratchets up the suspense of not knowing how our hero is going to escape this deranged situation. Unfortunately, that’s not the movie they made. Instead, Exit 8’s reach exceeds its grasp as it aims for profundity the film never earns, with the hallway trying to teach the Lost Man a “lesson” that is haphazardly problematic. Getting into specifics would be spoiler territory, but let’s just say that there’s likely a decent portion of the film’s potential audience who would find what Exit 8 is trying to say to be deeply offensive in a way I’m not certain the filmmakers anticipated.