Exit 8

I was lucky enough to be able to visit Japan a few years ago with a friend of mine, and like everyone in Tokyo (often considered the world’s largest city), we availed ourselves of the subway system. Although much effort is made to make directions and maps clear to all, the stations are massive and labyrinthine, and one day my friend and I got lost and couldn’t find our way out. Luckily for us, a police officer guided us to the correct elevator, and our trip continued. The protagonist of the new film Exit 8, however, is not so fortunate. 

One day while riding a crowded subway train, The Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya) witnesses a man berating a woman with a baby about its crying, but he pretends not to see this and leaves the train. He then gets a call from his girlfriend telling him she is pregnant and asking him what he thinks she should do. Before he can fully respond, the call cuts out. He finds himself walking through a corridor supposedly leading to Exit 8, but the hallway keeps repeating itself, as if somehow he’s gotten stuck in a loop. He finds instructions about how to get out: he needs to move ahead, but whenever he finds “an anomaly” or anything different from previous iterations of the loop, he needs to reverse and go the other way. He has to succeed in this eight times to escape, but if he fails in any way, the process resets back to zero. This task seems like it would be simple enough, but it isn’t, and if he can’t get it right, he could possibly be stuck there forever.

Ninomiya does a credible job of having panic attacks and an emotional breakdown over what is mainly just an empty hallway, and his performance invests the film with dramatic stakes. Yamato Kochi is also quite good as Walking Man, another captive of the loop, equally strong in scenes that highlight his humanity and others in which he is a grinning ghoul. Naru Asanuma brings a sense of hope to the story as The Boy, effectively conveying the character’s fears, although his role is largely silent.

Director Genki Kawamura brings an assured and controlled touch to the project, using his visual (Keisuke Imamura’s cinematography creates a perfect liminal space) and sonic tools sparingly but precisely. He uses the repetition of the movie’s concept to his advantage, making the audience into detectives as we too seek eagerly for anomalies. All that leaning forward pays off in an excellent jump scare, in a picture that isn’t really about that kind of thing. As a cowriter (with Kentaro Hirase, adapting the original game from Kotake Create), Kawamura manages to make a compelling and affecting film from a game that had no characters. It’s a specifically Japanese allegory about moral courage and resisting conformity, but its message could apply anywhere. 

This film may not be for all audiences – you have to be open to and patient with its M. C. Escher vibe – but if you’re willing to try something a bit different, Exit 8 is a diverting detour.