{"id":13600,"date":"2026-04-20T22:08:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13600"},"modified":"2026-04-20T22:08:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:08:28","slug":"exit-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13600","title":{"rendered":"Exit 8"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In recent weeks, A24 has been circulating trailers for an upcoming film called Backrooms<\/em>. For those who aren’t familiar, I admire your blissful ignorance of 4chan, creepypastas, and the darkest godless corners of the internet. Suffice to say that A24 is taking the general concept of an unremarkable liminal space that folds in on itself and repeats itself, trapping any unwary trespasser in a dull and monotonous purgatory… and adapting that into a feature film. But that’s a story for another time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, we’ve got Exit 8<\/em>, a film that just happens to have a remarkably similar premise, and it just happened to have been released a month before Backrooms<\/em>. Granted, there are enough differences to make Exit 8<\/em> its own story. There are some new ideas here, but not enough of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We open with our anonymous Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya) as he’s moving through the famous Tokyo subways on his way to a new temp job. And his morning is shaken in a big way with the news that his newly-ex-girlfriend (played by Nana Komatsu) is pregnant. Before the Lost Man can respond, the call cuts out when he takes a wrong turn and inexplicably finds himself wandering around in a closed loop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helpfully (and again, inexplicably — none of this is ever explained), there’s a sign that lists the rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Do not ignore any anomalies.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. If you see any anomalies, turn back immediately.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. If you don’t see any anomalies, keep moving forward.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Leave at Exit 8.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    In other words, the Lost Man has to wander this loop and try to guess as to whether something is there (or missing) that shouldn’t be. Sometimes the “anomaly” can be as subtle as an upside-down letter on a sign, and sometimes it can be a bunch of monstrous rats running around. The trick is to turn back immediately if he sees anything wrong, and keep moving forward if there’s nothing wrong. All he has to do is guess correctly eight times in a row and he gets to leave. If he misses an anomaly or goes back when everything is right, then he has to start over at zero. (Another sign next to the rules helpfully keeps track.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Did I mention that this film is based on a video game? Because it’s based on “The Exit 8”, an indie horror game out of Japan three years ago. I might add that the first several minutes of the film are shot in POV, presumably in tribute to the original walking simulator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Folks, this is pretty much the entire movie. We’re essentially watching someone else play an indie horror game. Which is not to say that it can’t be enjoyable — Iron Lung<\/em> pulled that off only a couple months ago, and with much less to work with than this movie had. And like that previous success, this movie also does a solid job putting us in the headspace of the protagonist and showing the character develop through mastering the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In fact, it’s pretty much the only part of this movie that works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There’s a major problem right off the bat because the rules — by design — kill the horror aspect flat fucking dead. It’s bad enough when some idiot character is standing there, screaming and helpless, while everyone in the audience is screaming at them to run away and get out of there. But it’s a whole ‘nother level of failure when the film itself — repeatedly and quite literally, right to the goddamn letter — tells the protagonist “if you see an anomaly, turn back immediately<\/strong><\/span>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That makes it a hundred times more aggravating every single time a character stops to inspect something out of the ordinary. (Yes, there are more characters, I’ll touch on them later.) They have no reason to stop and take a closer look, and every motivation to turn right back and try another circuit. Yet they’d rather stop and subject us all to some weird jump scare or surreal imagery, even though we all know perfectly well that our characters will live to get back up and walk another circuit like nothing happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That’s not scary. That’s fucking boring. And it only gets more boring, the more we learn about the rules and how this whole game works. And the more these characters stop to see what’s going on instead of turning and running away at the first sign of danger like they’re goddamn supposed to do, the less sympathetic they get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Oh, and did I mention that the Lost Man is asthmatic? Because at first, his chronic dependence on an inhaler seems like it could make for a good reminder of the protagonist’s mortality, and the inhaler’s capacity could make for an urgent time limit. Right up until the Lost Man throws it away and never needs it again at any point in the movie. Shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The premise is monotonous by design, so we need something to break up the tedium over these 90 minutes. There’s the mysterious Walking Man (Yamato Kochi), who walks by on every circuit like clockwork, and the film indulges in a lengthy digression to explain his whole deal for however little good it ultimately does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    By far the more interesting and significant inclusion is The Boy (Naru Asanuma), a kid who somehow got himself lost in this loop. The good news is, he’s heavily implied to be autistic. Great for spotting differences and anomalies, but not so good at communicating what he’s found. The general idea is that the Boy grows and develops into a more effective team player as the Lost Man starts warming up to the idea that he could be a father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Unfortunately, the characters are all anonymous blank slates by design, and the family drama doesn’t really mesh with the horror in any significant way (aside from the recurring motif of babies screaming). Additionally, the film keeps trying to make some kind of statement about life with smartphones and how we’re hopelessly dependent on them to experience the world around us. But that doesn’t really develop into much of anything either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The big problem here is that with the central concept of an infinitely looping subway corridor, we’ve got a perfect metaphor for the drudgery of everyday modern life. And in the middle of it, there’s a “spot the difference” game that doesn’t make any lick of sense in the context of that metaphor. And in the middle of that<\/span> concentric circle, we’ve got a man who only recently found out that he’s going to be a father and trying to come to grips with that. Which certainly does not<\/span> qualify as repetitive workaday drudgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    At the core of Exit 8<\/em> is an idea that worked much better as a video game than a movie. I get the temptation to try and adapt it, but this shows all the signs of a film made by people who had an amazing initial concept and no idea what to do with it. The film keeps grasping at straws, trying all these different avenues to make the premise of the game into some greater thematic metaphor, but nothing works because it’s all too undercooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Worst of all, horror is supposed to be transgressive. It’s supposed to be surprising. And it’s borderline impossible to be transgressive or surprising when the rules are so thoroughly laid out and consistently followed. So that kills the horror, the lack of any explanation kills the world-building, the deliberately bland characters kill the development, and the lack of any thematic cohesion kills any justification for trying to adapt this premise into a film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Sorry, but there’s no way I can recommend this. And I’m not exactly optimistic about Backrooms<\/em> either, but time will tell on that one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Missed connections<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":13603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5121,48],"class_list":["post-13600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-exit-8","tag-foreign-films"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/PXL_20260421_045559196-scaled-e1776748096800.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3uOb3-3xm","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13600"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13604,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13600\/revisions\/13604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}