“Exit 8” opens with a scenario we’re all probably a little familiar with – a little mindless scrolling to pass the time on a long commute.
The opening of the horror film, directed by Genki Kawamura and based on the 2023 video game, represents “Exit 8” at its most interesting. We begin firmly rooted in the point of view of our main character (Kazunari Ninomiya) – seeing what he sees and hearing what he hears, our only view of him reflected back at us in the subway window. He’s listening to music and thumbing his way through social media, inundated with photos of war, homeless encampments, and what appear to be genetically modified rats. Then, his mindless scroll is interrupted by a crying baby.
Still in the protagonist’s head (we will come to know him as The Lost Man), we take our headphones out and look up and see a mother and baby sitting a few seats down the way. As the baby continues to scream, the man standing in front of the mother suddenly starts to berate her, dressing her down for not being able to keep her child quiet on a busy train. It’s uncomfortable, and you want The Lost Man to say something. But, he just slowly puts his headphones back in and goes back to his phone – ignoring the woman and the baby, just like everyone else.
This opening hinges on the idea that, through the proliferation of technology, it’s become easier for us to ignore the things we’d rather not deal with. When his ex-girlfriend calls, The Lost Man ignores her once, but relents when she calls a second time. She’s pregnant with his baby, she says, and she’s not sure what to do. In his surprise, he doesn’t pay attention to where he’s walking, wandering through the Japanese subway system until it becomes apparent that he’s somehow become stuck in a loop. He’s not going to be able to ignore what happens next – in fact, as it becomes more clear that he’s trapped in this hallway and vulnerable to the horrors it holds, paying attention is going to be the only thing that can save him.
Throughout this opening, “Exit 8” primes you for a film about how self-centered we’ve become in the age of technology – and, in a lot of ways, it is about that. “Exit 8” quickly becomes a story about a man dealing with the possibility of impending fatherhood. What side of that equation our protagonist comes down on – particularly when combined with the fact that Japan is in the middle of a population crisis – feels a little heavy handed. But the real issue with “Exit 8” is that it’s too beholden to its video game roots to be truly exciting, more interested in the set up than its protagonist’s arc, and therefore completely whiffing on any emotional payoff.
Video games have become ripe ground for movie and TV adaptations (“The Last of Us,” “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie”), but “Exit 8” feels limited by its video game structure in a particularly dull way. As The Lost Man circles the endless hallway, he eventually finds a list of rules on the wall. He’s on level zero, and needs to make it all the way to level eight to get out. The hallway he goes down should be exactly the same each time, but if he sees any differences (called anomalies), he is to turn around and go back to the way he came in order to get to the next level. If the hallway is normal, he can keep moving forward.
While asking the audience to continuously watch a man memorize a hallway, “Exit 8” simultaneously asks us to care about The Lost Man’s relationship to parenthood. We eventually learn that there are multiple people stuck in this loop, one of whom is a little boy (Naru Asanuma). The little boy may be real (or, he may be a representation of our protagonist’s unborn child), but either way The Lost Man’s journey eventually begins to line up with the boy’s, sending The Lost Man on parallel journeys of escape and self-discovery. However, the film is far less interested in that self-discovery than it is its own construction, and that’s where it completely fails.
Immediately, “Exit 8” teaches the audience to watch it as if they were playing a video game, gamifying the action in a way that detracts from the emotional story it’s trying to tell. It also makes it hard to abide what would otherwise be normal horror movie nonsense. While on level three, The Lost Man gets a phone call from his ex-girlfriend. He knows he has no service in this hallway, and he knows that should anything change each time he walks through it, he should turn around and go back. She didn’t call him the last two times he did this, and yet he immediately believes the call is real and keeps moving forward.
It would be one thing if there was anything meaty to latch onto regarding The Lost Man’s relationship with his ex, but the movie gives us the bare minimum. So, the protagonist doesn’t seem caught up in his emotions so much as he just seems dumb. This becomes a problem throughout “Exit 8” with multiple characters. They often ignore anomalies outright or, if they notice them, go investigate further instead of …. I don’t know, immediately turning around so they can get out of this nightmare as quickly as possible?
People doing dumb things in horror movies is not unique to “Exit 8.” Horror movie characters are always talking to people they have no business talking to, descending into basements they have no business being in, etc. But in asking us to watch it with video game-brain engaged, “Exit 8” limits the audience’s patience for stupidity. It would be one thing if the horrors that awaited The Lost Man were genuinely terrifying, but they’re unnerving at best, boring at worst.
“Exit 8” is in theaters on April 10.
