{"id":7997082,"date":"2026-04-09T12:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T19:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thewrap.com\/?p=7997082"},"modified":"2026-04-09T12:24:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T19:24:24","slug":"exit-8-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewrap.com\/creative-content\/movies\/exit-8-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Exit 8\u2019 Review: A Freakily Liminal Horror Movie That Gives Video Game Adaptations a Good Name"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve ever been lost in a subway you know that getting lost in a subway suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. It\u2019s upsettingly narrow yet paradoxically cavernous, stark in design but grimy to the touch, and the smell of stale urine is somehow worse than the smell of the fresh stuff. You couldn\u2019t pay me to get lost in a subway again, but I\u2019d happily pay good money to see \u201cExit 8,\u201d over and over, because it transforms the experience into something scary and personal. And also because it wasn\u2019t filmed in Smell-O-Vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExit 8\u201d is the feature film version of The Exit 8, a 2023 video game about walking through a repeating corridor. You\u2019re searching for anomalies, and if you notice anything unusual \u2014 the eyes on one of the posters are following you, or there\u2019s an ominous noise emerging from a storage locker \u2014 you have to go back the way you came. If there\u2019s nothing out of the ordinary you move forward, towards the exit. But if you missed something you have to start all over again, and possibly stay stuck forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kazunari Ninomiya stars as the Lost Man, a mild-mannered nobody who gets a phone call from his ex-girlfriend, explaining she\u2019s pregnant. She asks him to make a life-altering decision, out of the blue, and that\u2019s not the kind of thing he does. He can\u2019t even tell an angry man on the subway to stop being a jerk to a poor woman and her child. There are men of action and then there\u2019s this guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he trudges from his train back to the surface, into a life he wasn\u2019t expecting, he finds himself passing through the same hallway, in a constant loop. He\u2019s looking for Exit 8 but he can\u2019t get past the sign that says Exit 1. He\u2019s trapped in a state of non-existence, of almost living, of almost controlling his life. Fortunately for him, and the audience, there\u2019s a poster that explains the rules: Search for anomalies, go back if you find them, move forward if you don\u2019t, and take Exit 8 to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n

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It was very polite of the universe to spell it out so clearly, even if it does make you wonder who\u2019s in charge of this little experiment. What this Lost Man experiences is terrifying but also a metaphor for his inability to accept change and move on with his life, so presumably there\u2019s a supernatural force that’s rooting for him to solve the puzzle and figure his baggage out. Imagine the angel from \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d if he just threw George Bailey into The Backrooms and you\u2019ve got a sense of how \u201cExit 8\u201d works. (I\u2019d say that\u2019s one messed up angel but what George actually went through was messed up to begin with.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s not a lot to director and co-writer Genki Kawamura\u2019s adaptation, and there doesn\u2019t need to be. \u201cExit 8\u201d is a brisk 95 minutes long and even that stretches the premise a little. Still, like the game, the film has an absorbing mechanic. The Lost Man has to search this one, short hallway for any inconsistencies, most of which are scary as hell once you figure them out, and the photography keeps that whole hallway in view so the audience can search along with him. It\u2019s like \u201cBlue\u2019s Clues\u201d if the clues were hairless rats with human eyeballs growing on their backs. Or \u201cHighlights\u201d magazine if Goofus got stuck in the \u201cSpot the Difference\u201d game and experienced pure existential dread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We obviously don\u2019t interact with the Lost Man and help him on his journey but Keisuke Imamura\u2019s deceptively complex cinematography inspires that glorious urge that only the most absorbing horror movies can offer: We want to yell at the screen. Not to make fun of \u201cExit 8,\u201d but to stop the hero before he makes a mistake. \u201cLook above you! The light fixtures! The light fixtures are all @$%ed!!!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cExit 8\u201d isn\u2019t just one of the best video game adaptations. It might actually be the best so far. Hollywood has a tendency to adapt games which were already obvious riffs on classic movies \u2014 \u201cUncharted\u201d and \u201cIndiana Jones,\u201d \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d and \u201cEnter the Dragon,\u201d \u201cSilent Hill\u201d and \u201cJacob\u2019s Ladder\u201d \u2014 so when you translate those games back into films, their stories aren\u2019t just derivative. They\u2019re diminished, faded, tired. The premise of \u201cExit 8\u201d hasn’t been done to death in the motion picture milieu. It takes most of its inspiration from \u201cThe Backrooms<\/a>,\u201d and the feature film version of that online phenomenon isn\u2019t even out yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kawamura has brought something relatively fresh into cinema. That’s great on its own, but what’s more, he\u2019s successfully adapted the game\u2019s premise to tell an effective, albeit simple, cinematic tale about one man\u2019s personal journey. Or, if he never finds his way out of that subway (it is a horror movie after all), a story about his tragic failure to get anywhere in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that right there is the biggest anomaly. \u201cExit 8\u201d is a video game adaptation that never feels like it\u2019s just cashing in on an intellectual property. It has a story to tell, it tells it well, it\u2019s scary as hell \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t smell.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Alexandra\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t
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Genki Kawamura\u2019s excellent adaptation of The Exit 8 mines a simple concept for shock and substance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9838,"featured_media":7997083,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"byline":{"profiles":[{"type":"byline_id","atts":{"term_id":504584,"post_id":7303054}}]},"_links_to":"","_links_to_type":0,"nb_breaking_email_type":"fbc26c31-0bb2-4ce8-84ce-d208e907571d","nb_breaking_template":"single-story.html","nb_breaking_from_name":"TheWrap","nb_breaking_subject":"","nb_breaking_preview":"","nb_breaking_list":[],"nb_breaking_header_img":7555403,"nb_breaking_should_send":false,"nb_breaking_content":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Discover why entertainment executives and professionals rely on the WrapPRO platform daily for exclusive coverage, analysis, deeper reporting, and access to VIP events & screenings throughout the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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