My quick rating – 6.5/10. Exit 8 starts with a guy doomscrolling on his phone while sitting on a crowded subway train. Because apparently being trapped in an endless nightmare corridor wasn’t enough punishment, we’re going to make him sit through the modern hellscape of public transportation first. He’s interrupted by a screaming baby and then a screaming adult yelling at the baby’s parent, which he mostly ignores before getting off the train and continuing through life completely isolated from everyone around him.
Then he gets some surprise news from an ex-girlfriend. She’s pregnant. And that’s when the phone call cuts out while he’s coughing like he’s got about three minutes left to live. Then things start getting weird.
The Man (Kazunari Ninomiya) starts noticing that he’s walking through the same stretches of corridor over and over. There’s Exit 8 again. There’s that same guy walking toward him again. And that same guy…well, he keeps showing up.
The rules are simple. If you notice something unusual, turn around. If everything looks normal, keep walking. Eventually, if you get everything right, you’ll reach Exit 8 and escape. Miss an anomaly, and you’re back at the beginning.
Easy enough, right? Yeah, sure.
The guy he keeps passing, The Walking Man (Yamato Kochi, is particularly creepy, and I started wondering whether he was just part of the puzzle or another person trapped in the same endless loop. There’s also The Boy (Naru Asanuma), a surprisingly cute little kid who is also caught up in this bizarre situation.
The thing that I enjoyed the most about Exit 8 was the way that it accomplishes a lot without doing very much. By using some very creative camera angles, the director, Genki Kawamura, makes it possible to hide a bit of the corridor or a sign, which starts to make us question perception. At times there is something eerie right in front of your face, and at others there is an ordinary hallway, which makes you wonder if you’re the anomaly for suspecting everything.
That’s especially impressive considering the movie is based on a video game that is essentially built around walking through a corridor and looking for changes. Not exactly The Last of Us when it comes to story material.
The screenplay adds actual characters, background, and development to that basic concept, and that’s what makes the movie work as more than a stretched-out game adaptation. The movie never bothers explaining exactly how or why this nightmare exists, and honestly, I think that’s the right choice. Part of the horror is that it simply happens. There isn’t a convenient exposition dump explaining the supernatural corridor’s operating system.
It’s a smart and inventive little movie that understands the power of minimalism. It doesn’t need monsters jumping out every five minutes when it can make you suspicious of doorknob placement.
