Exit 8 review: Chilling game of spot the difference
Movie adaptations of video games don’t have the best reputation. They can be really hit and miss, and if we’re being honest, misses happen more often than hits. Thankfully, Exit 8 is an exception.
This Japanese film, based on the 2023 indie video game of the same name, follows “The Lost Man” (Kazunari Ninomiya), who has just discovered his ex is pregnant with his child. After their phone call, he tries to leave the subway station, but exit 8 has disappeared, and he keeps going around in circles. It turns out that he is now locked in a game, and the rules are simple: If you notice an anomaly in the corridor, turn back, but if you don’t notice anything unusual/different, continue forward. If he gets this right eight times, he will be able to leave, but if he makes a mistake, he’s back to square one (or exit 0 in this case).
What a concept! It’s a very cool idea that people both familiar and unfamiliar with the game should enjoy (although players will probably get more out of it, especially the loyal production design). You basically become The Lost Man, searching the corridor for any differences in the posters, the doors, and the businessman who walks past. It’s like a grown-up version of spot the difference, forcing you to pay close attention to detail and keep an eye out for what’s changed each time he walks through the space.
Some anomalies are subtle and hard to spot, and you don’t know whether The Lost Man has completed the level, whereas other anomalies are very big, freaky and obvious, like blood, darkness and mutated creatures. This is where the psychological horror element comes into play, but these aren’t very frequent, and the film is mostly a mystery to be solved. The puzzle really tests our protagonist’s mental fortitude and resilience as he has to forge ahead even when he gets knocked back to zero.
You are simply watching a man walking the same corridor over and over again, so it naturally becomes quite repetitive, even though each walk is different. Admittedly, I started to zone out and slightly lose interest, so I felt grateful when the story shifted perspectives to The Walking Man (Yamato Kochi) and The Boy (Naru Asanuma), another character in his corridor, before circling back to The Lost Man.
Exit 8 is a clever film with a nightmarish premise. It didn’t sustain me for the entire runtime but I still respect it a lot.
In cinemas from Friday 24th April