366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Genki Kawamura
FEATURING: Kazunari Ninomiya, Yamato Kôchi, Naru Asanuma
PLOT: An expectant father finds himself trapped in a seemingly never-ending subway corridor.
COMMENTS: In recent years, an increasing number of movies and TV shows have attempted to adapt video games. At the same time, there is a trend inside the indie gaming landscape of making psychological horror adventures set in liminal spaces, transitional places with an unsettling vibe. The 2023 game “Exit 8” by Kotake Create is an iconic short game of this subgenre. 2 years later, collaborating with the original work’s creator, Genki Kawamura translates this piece for the cinematic medium.
The backstory becomes apparent from the beginning, with the setup explaining our main character and his anxieties as an expectant father. The protagonist is then trapped inside a unique one-way subway labyrinth where he needs to spot “anomalies” and then immediately change his direction if he wants to escape. This begins a surreal odyssey not dissimilar from space-bending cinematic tales in the vein of Isaac Ezban’s The Incident (2014) or Lorcan Finnegan’s Vivarium (2019).
We can also trace aesthetic influences from video games, and not only from the eponymous game this work is based upon. For starters, there is a segment early on where POV shots recall the first-person perspective of the original game and many other survival horror titles. The “Silent Hill” game franchise is a clear influence. As in that series, the supernatural anomalies our hero encounters are a distorted reflection of his scarred psyche, bringing narrative depth and character development to the table. The original “Exit 8” game had nothing like that.
Another change from the original is the introduction of secondary characters. Our hero encounters other trapped souls inside this endless corridor, each with his or her own identity and backstory. While one person’s journey was enough to sustain the short experience of the original game, more characters are necessary for a meaningful feature-length experience.
From a technical perspective, this work is astonishing. The environments are the perfect recreation of the original game’s virtual spaces, with uncannily vibrant reflected light. There are also great body horror effects that will entertain fans of the weird and grotesque. Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” underlines our protagonist’s inner conflicts and his transformative journey.
In the end, it is better to approach this movie as a stand-alone piece rather than an adaptation. It offers something completely different from the work that inspired it, using its predecessor’s simple formula as a metaphor for insecurities, anxieties, and existential angst, creating a unique narrative in the process.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: