Indie horror movies have been killing it (pun intended) for the past decade with their focus on nerve-shredding dread and pathos out the ass. In the video game space, it’s a similar situation. While really only the Resident Evil franchise can keep putting out banger after banger, it’s indie games where most of the really interesting horror arrives. So why not put that particular chocolate and peanut butter together? Just look at the success of Markiplier’s Iron Lung movie. But, when it came to another streamer-friendly uncanny game-turned-movie, I was a bit more dubious. I mean, The Exit 8 game doesn’t even have a story. But, now it’s a movie, and it weirdly works.
The game, from developer Kotake Create, dropped in 2023. Without even a title screen, the player finds themselves in first-person view, walking down the fluorescent-tiled hallway of a Japanese subway. White tiles, a yellow line on the floor, some signage, and a man walking harmlessly the other direction greet you. But as you round the corners, you find yourself back at the same hallway, with the same signs, and strangely the same walking man, staring back at you. This is our gameplay loop in Exit 8. To find a way out, we have to find any and all anomalies in the hallway. If we see one, we turn around and go back the other way. If we don’t, we don’t. After eight such correct guesses, we can leave. If we mess up one, the counter resets.
Some of the anomalies are super obvious, while others are nefariously subtle. An observant player can complete the game in a matter of minutes. How, then, can Exit 8 turn into a 95-minute movie? To my surprise, pretty effectively. Without ever changing the premise of the game that much, director and co-writer Genki Kawamura and co-writer Kentaro Hirase add enough story, and give interesting wrinkles to familiar elements, that a literal looping hallway actually feels like it’s heading somewhere.
The story follows of Exit 8 a character simply called “The Lost Man” (Kazunari Ninomiya), who rides the subway as he gets a call from his ex (or estranged) girlfriend. She informs him she’s pregnant, and he begins to spiral. As he exits the train and walks toward the exit, he seamlessly ends up in the familiar hallway and quickly learns “the rules.” He maybe believes the rules are a thing too quickly, but it works for the movie well enough.
From there, the Lost Man encounters strange and uncanny elements, most prominently the Walking Man (Yamato Kochi), who will occasionally behave extra creepily depending on the loop. While never fully explaining anything, the Exit 8 movie does add a bit of context for some of it, and indeed, we learn more about the Walking Man than expected. The anomalies get stranger and more upsetting as the movie goes along, and the Lost Man will have to sort himself out if he hopes to leave.
One of the movie’s biggest successes is how well it emulates the feeling of an endless, cut-free loop that makes up the game. While the movie does have cuts, both obvious and hidden, the bulk of the action feels like a single take. The film also recreates the Exit 8 hallways to perfection, and its every nook and cranny will seer into your brain. Knowing the geography of the small space is of paramount importance to noticing the eeriness of the anomalies.
Exit 8 doesn’t outstay its welcome, it gets in, gets out, tells a familiar but mainly compelling enough story with a few interesting twists in its many looped hallways. It might not revolutionize the video game movie, but it does show that any game can make for good cinema.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.