The demand that has built up for video game-related media is a consequence of how the industry strip-mined the superhero genre of creative opportunities. Young people with low attention spans are more interested in gaming than cinema, and critical reception no longer has any real impact on the market for anything with an established fanbase; even if A Minecraft Movie and The Super Mario Bros. Galaxy Movie catered to the lowest-common denominator, they still made enough to justify any critical backlash. The best video game adaptations have been on television. The Last of Us worked in its first season because it was directly drawn from the script of a game that was praised for being cinematic, and Prime Video’s Fallout was an original story that just happened to take place in an established universe. Fallout and The Last of Us worked because they didn’t require any previous gaming knowledge, which can’t be said of most cinematic adaptations.
The issue with the narrativization of video games is that a majority of these properties were never designed to have a nuanced plot or characters. A video game protagonist is an avatar for the player, and doesn’t make for an interesting leading character; other than nostalgia for familiar iconography, the most that video game films like Uncharted or Sonic the Hedgehog can do is fill in the player experience with generic stories. Hollywood’s affinity with video games is a result of their fanbases, with no regard for how to capture the psychology involved in working through a simulated reality. Exit 8 is an exception to these trends because it doesn’t have any padding. The film’s a straightforward, stripped-down case of detail-oriented problem-solving; it’s retained the puzzle box nature of the independent game for which it was based, but has enough visual inventiveness to justify the change in medium.
The Exit 8 was a 2023 video game that began with a simple premise; what would it be like to be trapped within a sprawling, infinite metro station? Train stations are often used as metaphors for transitionary moments in fiction, and in the game it’s a stand-in for the disappearing loneliness of being constrained by society’s borders. The station represents the totality of where an individual can go because nothing exists beyond the liminal space that’s designated for someone of their merit and class; should societal forces conspire to keep them trapped within an unending, soulless malaise, there would be no way to escape. It’s a hallmark among international independent video games that they tend to resemble the creative scenarios within speculative short stories, whereas American gaming content is drawn from the obsessive worldbuilding that South Park would make fun of.
The film, Exit 8, is directed by Genki Kawamura, a veteran of the Japanese film industry whose past credits include collaborations with Hirokazu Kore-eda. The protagonist played by Kazunari Ninomiya isn’t given a name, as an homage to the source material, but he does have a dilemma; after informed that his girlfriend is pregnant, he’s forced to quickly take the subway to meet her and determine their next actions. The first sign that he might not be fit for parenthood is signified by his failure to protect a woman (Nana Komatsu) who’s harassed by men at the station for her crying infant. Regardless of whether this is a sign that Ninomiya’s character isn’t fit for fatherhood, is too meek to risk his own livelihood, or lacking in empathy, it’s enough for him to be selected by an unknown larger power to be trapped within a series of never-ending corridors that always loop back in on themselves.
Exit 8 is as conceptually driven as a Ray Bradbury story, but the film’s internal logic adds up. There’s specific things that the character, ostensibly known as “The Lost Man,” can and can’t do within the station; time may not pass in the sense that he ages, but he can still sustain injuries that aren’t healed when his physical environment is reloaded. What’s more important is the metaphorical, fatalistic journey that he’s sent on through encounters with others that are trapped within the same circumstances. Each of these interactions are poised to have dual purposes; while he’s tasked with the protection of a young boy (Naru Asanuma) who could be a stand-in for his girlfriend’s child, there’s also flashbacks that would suggest that this is a figure of the past. Additional dangers that are found within the endless exits aren’t exactly subtle, but the sharpness of the low-budget filmmaking suggests that this was an economic decision to sustain the crisp 95 minute running time.
Ninomiya hasn’t had a role this good since his breakthrough performance alongside Ken Watanabe in Letters from Iowa Jima, the better of two films Clint Eastwood made about World War II. His boyish looks were integral to that story about a loss of innocence, and they’re equally well-suited for his role in Exit 8 as a man who hasn’t accepted the responsibilities of adulthood. In a film where the visuals are purposefully derivative, Ninomiya’s facial expressions are useful in implementing the scares. Exit 8 is a PG-13 film, and the banality of infinity is much more terrifying than any visceral blood and gore.
Although Exit 8 will have a theatrical release in North America from NEON, it was produced by the Japanese entertainment company Toho, best known for its involvement with the Godzilla and kaiju films. While Exit 8 doesn’t have a lot in common with a film like Mothra vs. Godzilla stylistically, they share a distinctly Japanese approach to genre fiction. Exit 8 is plentiful with political and social subtext, but it’s not directly conveyed to the audience in a finger-wagging monologue in the way that an American release might.