Ask anybody — it’s simple to get misplaced within the Tokyo subway. The town’s underground boasts ample signposting to information commuters and vacationers — however there’s a lot of it, the passageways and stairways all look alike, and oh, we’re proper again the place we began.
Genki Kawamura’s pleasant blockbuster provocation “Exit 8” understands and exploits these frustrations, remodeling these claustrophobic corridors right into a website of psychological exploration, private alternative, and nationwide anxieties.
Fairly probably the primary online game adaptation to premiere on the Cannes Movie Pageant, “Exit 8” is customized from the virally profitable 2023 impartial sport of the identical title, which has now hit over 1.5 million downloads worldwide and has additional web cache on YouTube and Twitch (the preferred video has 6.2 million views on the time of writing). Ostensibly a first-person strolling simulator, “Exit 8” the sport is “Spot the Distinction” by means of “The Stanley Parable,” a compelling little expertise that may be accomplished in beneath an hour, in customary flatscreen or VR.
The target is straightforward: Search for anomalies in a single underground passageway that weren’t there in your earlier walkthrough. For those who spy any, flip round and return the way in which you got here. For those who assume there are none, proceed down the hallway and across the subsequent nook. Get it proper, and also you advance from Exit 0 to Exit 1, and so forth. Get it improper, and also you’re returned to the previous exit. The objective is to achieve Exit 8, which is able to deliver you again above floor. Toho’s blockbuster movie adaptation is a remarkably trustworthy translation, one-to-one in its central surroundings and signage, to the purpose that the movie at first appears like an FMV transmedia commercial for its supply materials. However the core idea has been expanded in good and surprisingly thrilling methods.
The directing and co-writing credit score of Genki Kawamura would seem an odd alternative. As a outstanding movie producer (“Your Identify,” “Monster”) and best-selling novelist (“If Cats Disappeared from the World”), Kawamura’s debut directorial effort was 2022’s “A Hundred Flowers,” a subdued, melancholy dementia drama. His work focuses on interpersonal struggles, not J-horror leap scares. However take one other look, and it begins to make sense.
Arashi famous person Kazunari Ninomiya is The Misplaced Man, a backpack-clad commuter in search of a means out of the underground and again to the sunshine of day — the place his once-girlfriend is ready to listen to his determination on whether or not he desires to maintain the newborn that she’s carrying. Initially distracted by his playlist and a telephone name, he quickly realizes that the passageways are looping, a state of affairs that he shortly and pragmatically adapts to. As he scans the ads on the partitions and itemizes his surroundings out loud, Ninomiya and the shiny manufacturing design deliver a “Squid Sport” dopamine to proceedings. Your curiosity and a spotlight is maintained since you need to see what’s across the subsequent nook. Did The Misplaced Man fail to see one thing? What is going to the following exit deliver? Wait, did the eyes on that poster simply transfer?
Ninomiya’s megastar reputation takes on a brand new form when positioned inside these hyper-reflective, Unreal Engine-esque partitions. A movie that speaks in online game grammar, “Exit 8” appears like a live-action “Let’s Play’” a logical trendy evolution of cinema the place your expertise is akin to watching am influencer livestream their findings — solidified by your fellow spectators, who lean in as you do when new developments come up and confusion continues.
“Exit 8” accommodates no leap scares. It as an alternative succeeds by a cumulative anxiousness, the place we may very well be caught right here perpetually (the feature-length working time is weaponized reasonably than wasted), and that one thing genuinely horrific might ultimately seem inside this cyclical house. One thing genuinely horrific does ultimately make its entrance, however it’s the little fears that go away an enduring impression. Disembodied wails of coin-locker infants echo off the tiled partitions. Poster ads promise higher pay, remind us of applicable etiquette, and uphold magnificence requirements. These are distinctly Japanese anxieties — as is getting trapped in a liminal house that scuppers your punctuality.
A brain-warping shift of perspective reveals the trail to be much less linear than first thought, permitting Kawamura and co-writer Kentaro Hirase to introduce additional dimension to its inhabitants. There are a number of gamers on this loop, they usually all need out for various causes. The twists in retailer are gratifying and value experiencing blind. Kawamura’s literary verve has elevated and remodeled a dialogue-free indie sport right into a thriller field extra harking back to advanced ADV adventures akin to “Zero Escape” and “Danganronpa,” and the cult movie traditional “Dice.”
It’s a devilishly entertaining time on the films, constructing to an exhilarating finale that facilities why The Misplaced Man, or certainly the viewer, ought to need to go away this recursive labyrinth. For those who’ve spied a business for “Exit 8,” it’s possible you’ll be questioning how a Japanese function in 2025 can probably use Ravel’s iconic “Bolero” in a means that feels wholly its personal — the observe turned synonymous with Sion Sono’s “Love Publicity” again in 2008 — however relaxation assured that that is the sharpest needledrop of the yr.
The Misplaced Man’s wrestle with impending fatherhood could appear slight, however it in the end proves resonant. “Exit 8” is a cinematic captcha, tasking us with discovering the distinction between one picture and the subsequent to show our humanity.
Grade: B+
“Exit 8” premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Pageant. It’s at the moment in search of U.S. distribution.