Recommendations of the Editorial team
Up the stairs, around the corner. You’re standing at one end of a long subway corridor – the kind of desolate, interchangeable space that city dwellers rush through every day. Walls and floors glow in that overexposed, antiseptic white that you know from Kubrick films and Apple Stores. A man with a briefcase strolls towards you and passes on the right. A sign on the ceiling points to the exit. On one side there are posters from dental practices and museum exhibitions; on the other three metal doors. Run to the end. Turn left. Right. Follow the arrows. A yellow sign says: Level 1.
Around the corner again – and you’re standing in the same corridor as before. The same man with the briefcase. The same sign. The same posters. Same doors. Left again, right again. If you’re lucky, the yellow sign now shows level 1. If you’re unlucky, you’re still at level 0. There’s now a set of rules next to it. And the same corridor again. Keep a close eye on the seemingly meaningless surroundings. If everything seems “normal,” move on. If you notice an anomaly – anything that differs from this first path from A to B – turn back immediately. Nevertheless, you end up in the same place. Always in circles. If you get it right often enough, you’ll reach level 8, where the outside world awaits. Anyone who ignores the instructions remains trapped in this urban purgatory with no way out.
That’s the premise of The Exit 8, a Japanese video game from Kotake Create that, as the millions who have played it can attest, turns the endless circling of a commuter into a thrilling, nail-biting first-person shooter without shooting. Not exactly the stuff of which to make a film – which didn’t stop director Genki Kawamura from doing exactly that. And in what can only be described as a small miracle, he not only transferred the eerie feeling of the original with remarkable fidelity and expanded it to include a kind of plot (he dropped the addition of “The”). Kawamura also delivers a genuine stroke of genius about the constant existential shock that is life in the 21st century. Hell is no longer the others. It’s being stuck in an eternal reboot, an eternally flickering matrix, the endless feeling of slowly getting nowhere – again and again and again.
Loop with no way out
Of course, there are occasional ghostly apparitions, disturbing screams and blood dripping from the ceiling. Kotake Create’s game threw a variety of anomalies at players, from the harmless (wasn’t the door handle on the side instead of in the middle?) to the sheer horror (why does this door suddenly creak open and what is lurking in the darkness behind it?). The film occasionally resorts to the first-person perspective, but adds a third-person Virgil: the Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya). When we meet him, he’s just another anonymous guy on another anonymous subway, ignoring a pompous slob yelling at a mother with a whining baby. It’s better to scroll through your phone and turn up the volume on your headphones. The fact that he hears Ravel’s “Boléro” – a piece that repeats a two-part melody and becomes rhythmically more and more intense – is a foretaste of what is to come.
When his daydream is interrupted by an urgent call from his girlfriend and he’s forced to think about a world beyond his digital cocoon, “Exit 8” introduces something of a plot. Stay or go? The irony is that the station itself is pulling the strings, forcing the Lost Man to rephrase the question: Can he stay or can he go? An exit is not a right, but a privilege. It has to be earned.
As soon as our tour guide realizes what a metaphysically impossible situation he is in, he begins to memorize every little detail and carefully check it off with each new round of déjà vu. Kawamura, himself a fan of the game, has stated that he wants the audience to feel like a player and an observer at the same time – the walkthrough nature is clearly noticeable – and he doesn’t shy away from switching and varying perspectives for effect. (His previous film, a 2022 adaptation of his own novel “A Hundred Flowers,” brilliantly uses perspective to recreate the state of consciousness of an elderly woman suffering from dementia. A must-see.) He also incorporated a number of elements that fans of “Exit 8” will recognize — most notably the Walking Man; played by theater actor Yamato Kochi as the most disturbing NPC in the world, whose programmed smile haunts you even in your sleep. He also gets a kind of backstory that gives the whole thing an additional tragic dimension. Let’s put it this way: every decision counts.
Father, child, paranoia
When a nameless boy (Naru Asanuma) appears and the Lost Man realizes that this mysterious child is not an anomaly, “Exit 8” gains pathos and paternal anxiety that mix with the free-floating paranoia. One begins to understand that Kawamura has been secretly weaving a parable masquerading as a modern horror film – an homage to The Shining, Ugetsu and several other masterpieces of horror. As we are led back to our starting point, passivity is no longer an option. One enters this unlikely but undeniably extraordinary video game adaptation prepared to be frightened. You leave feeling like you’ve just experienced a waking nightmare – tailor-made for Tokyo commuters and mopey Brooklyn dads alike.
