Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Genki Kawamura
Starring: Kazunari Ninomiya, Yamato Kochi, Naru Asanuma, Kotone Hanase, Nana Komatsu
Aside from a brief dalliance with the FIFA games around the turn of the century, I haven't been invested in video games since I was a kid in the early '90s. As such, I have no relationship with the source material of the recent crop of video game adaptations. I certainly haven't played Exit 8, so I can't comment on its movie adaptation's level of fealty to the game. What I can say is that it might be the most literal screen translation of a video game experience to date.
Whether you believe that's a positive or negative will depend entirely on what you want from a video game adaptation. A lot of gamers seem happy with movies that simply offer fan service through references. That was certainly the case with the recent Five Nights at Freddy's movies. Horror fans generally disliked those adaptations because they didn't work as horror movies, while fans of the game seemed to be content seeing its various elements appear in another medium.
As with the game on which it's based, director Genki Kawamura's Exit 8 is centred on a man who becomes trapped when the tunnels of a Tokyo subway station morph into an Escher-like endless loop with no apparent exit (the game likely also inspired the recent Taiwanese horror Suffocation, which transfers this premise to a high school).
The protagonist here is credited only as "The Lost Man" and played by Kazunari Ninomiya. After receiving a call from an ex-girlfriend (Nana Komatsu) who announces she is pregnant with his child, The Lost Man loses cellphone reception in the bowels of a subway station, and soon finds that he's trapped therein. Every time he tries to find a way out he ends up back at square one. He appears to be alone save for the presence of a creepy briefcase carrying salaryman (Yamato Kochi) who behaves like a video game's non-communicative NPC. Later a small boy (Naru Asanuma) will appear, along with a teenage schoolgirl (Kotone Hanase).
When you fail to become emotionally invested in a movie it can often feel like you're simply watching someone else play a video game. Never has that been more the case than with Exit 8, which takes the dynamics of video game construction so literally that we're essentially watching The Lost Man play the game of Exit 8. Evoking the concept of losing "lives," The Lost Man keeps finding himself back at the starting point when he makes a wrong move in solving the maze's puzzles. Time loop movies like Happy Death Day and Edge of Tomorrow have successfully pulled off this idea by ensuring that there is enough variance to keep us from falling asleep, along with charismatic protagonists. The Lost Man is a non-presence with all the personality of a sprite, and the scenario he finds himself in is so repetitive it begins to feel like some Stanley Milgram experiment is being played on the audience's patience. It's not until after the hour mark that Kawamura begins to shake things up a bit with the introduction of some surreal elements, but it's too little too late.
Exit 8 might have worked better as a segment of a Twilight Zone style anthology show. It has a Rod Serling-esque takeaway concerning how many of us simply move through life in a daze, the subway tunnels representing the monotony of our 9-5 lives. But that point is well and truly made in its first 15 minutes. The movie suggests that life is too short to waste on the things that don't matter, with The Lost Man coming to embrace the idea of being a father as he takes the small boy under his wing. Audience members just might follow this advice and head for their cinemas' exits long before The Lost Man finds his own way out. Life's too short.
Exit 8 is in UK/ROI cinemas from April 24th.
