Exit 8 – Film Review

Director – Genki Kawamura
Writers – Kotake Create, Kentaro Hirase, Genki Kawamura
Stars – Kazunari Ninomiya, Yamato Kochi, Naru Asanuma

We meet an average man (Kazunari Ninomiya) on his way to work in a packed subway carriage. He’s listening to loud music on his earbuds and scrolling through a series of videos on his phone. He briefly takes out his earbuds and hears a baby crying. A woman is holding a small child in her arms who is screaming. A man in a business suit starts to shout at her for bringing the child on a crowded train! When our main protagonist leaves the train, he starts to travel through the various corridors of the subway to find his exit, when he notices something unusual. He has become trapped in the subway, as the corridors start to repeat. He realises he is inside a strange game and has to figure out a way to escape.

This is a new work by director Genki Kawamura, which is based on the computer game of the same name. The film is broken into three segments with The Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya), Walking Man (Yamato Kochi) and The Boy (Naru Asanuma). We meet these three separate characters, all trapped in the same maze.

This is an unusual work, being described as a Liminal horror in some places, or a work that “focuses on the uncanny, surreal anxiety of transition spaces—abandoned hallways, empty malls, or dreamlike environments”. It delves into our sense of unease with these spaces, with examples such as The Shining (1980), Vivarium (2019), and It Follows (2014). There is a Beckettian feel to this unseen power toying with the world of men. You’re never quite sure of the purpose of this game, or how our protagonists have become trapped in it, like Gods in Olympus toying with the mortals below.

There are elements of Groundhog Day, and the many other time loop movies it spawned. It rarely lurches into a ‘fully-formed’ horror, but it does have its moments. You never really learn more about the characters; we only see them trying to solve the problem and find a way out of this strange maze. It’s a diverting 95 minutes of intrigue and bizarre happenings.