There’s a thinkpiece to be written about the rise of viral videos and pop culture products about liminal spaces, the sort of in-between places stuck between reality and … something else. Not only are they an entire internet genre, but they also clearly inspired Apple TV’s hit “Severance” and the upcoming A24 horror flick “Backrooms,” among many other projects. One of the most accomplished entries in this unsettling milieu was Kotake Create’s video game “Exit 8,” now turned into a film by Genki Kawamura, who co-wrote with Kentaro Hirase. Like a lot of actual games, the setup here is significantly better than the follow-through, but those opening scenes engender enough creepy atmosphere that it should carry most horror fans down the genre hallway.
The game’s addictive simplicity is essentially channeled into the film version. In the “walking simulator,” the player passes through relatively empty subway tunnels with simple rules. If you spot an anomaly, turn around; if you don’t see anything changed, proceed. There are obvious, major differences that will have you reversing course quickly, followed by ones that may be tougher to discern. Get it right 8 times and escape. Theoretically, one could “win” the game in about 20 minutes, which makes it a bit tough to adapt into a feature film, and could explain why Kawamura’s version loses some steam before its hero takes his final turn.
Kazunari Ninomiya plays “The Lost Man,” an average worker ant on his way to a temp job via subway. In one of Kawamura’s most striking visuals, he’s crammed into an underground train with men in black business attire with AirPods in their ears who mostly ignore the cries of a screaming baby until one loses his cool and yells at the poor mother. The interchangeable men don’t like a disturbance in their routine. This is a film about routine, and how the times when life interrupts our stasis are when we get the most lost.
The Lost Man gets a call from his ex-girlfriend on the way out of the station and discovers that she’s pregnant. The news basically pushes him into a liminal space as the stark white hallways he’s traveling become unpopulated (except for one robotically walking, smiling man) and repetitive. When he realizes that he’s stuck in a loop, he finds a sign with the rules of the game. He memorizes the details, including, naturally, an Escher poster (the 8 sure looks like a sideways infinity sign, too). Can he reach Exit 8 before he dies of exhaustion or some unknown threat?
While Kawamura starts his film with a first-person POV, “Exit 8” eventually expands beyond a one-man show. “The Walking Man” gets a chapter, and so does a boy that our hero finds in the hallways as he tries to escape. Of course, all of it is deeply symbolic, a sort of dream that someone might have after finding out their ex-girlfriend is pregnant. At one point, The Lost Man hears a baby in a subway locker, and the boy is either a vision of the protagonist as a child or his future son or both or neither. You get the idea.
It all blends into a truly effective dreamscape for about 45-50 minutes, especially as the anomalies become more threatening, like when blood literally drips from the ceiling. Kawamura was so clearly inspired by “The Shining” that he literally cribbed one of the most memorable scenes from Kubrick’s masterpiece in the final act. He knows you’ll sense that this, too, is a piece about a man whose mental unraveling is impacting the world around him, and so he leans right into the Jack Torrance of it all.
The sterility that first feels like a feature of “Exit 8” becomes a bit of a bug. It’s a film that struggles to maintain its nightmare grip on the viewer as the repetition becomes more numbing than entrancing. Still, there’s just enough for fans of the game or modern horror to chew on. If you wait to see it until PVOD or streaming, try watching it on a subway train on your way to work for maximum impact.
