While most video-game movies fail in trying to translate active game mechanics to the passive experience of movie-watching, Exit 8 thrives by truly making viewers feel as though they’re a part of the action. Director Genki Kawamura’s film is a frighteningly immersive experience that cleverly uses repetition to create claustrophobic and cloying tension. It’s this invitation to participation that keeps the audiences spooked and invested, even if the film’s narrative forays into melodrama threaten to release the mounting pressure.
Exit 8
3.5
/5
- Release Date
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August 29, 2025
- Runtime
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95 Minutes
- Director
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Genki Kawamura
- Writers
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Genki Kawamura, Kentaro Hirase
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Kazunari Ninomiya
The Lost Man
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Yamato Kochi
The Walking Man
In its opening moments, Exit 8 is so mesmerizing and propulsive, it feels like we’re riding a roller coaster. It begins with an almost eight-minute opening sequence shot entirely in the first person. We see everything through the vantage point of “The Lost Man” (Kazunari Ninomiya), who is on a crowded train trying to mind his own business. The camera turns when he notices an anomaly that’s disturbing his peace: a crying baby, followed by an irritated man who yells at said baby and its mother. Cleverly, Kawamura and cinematographer Keisuke Imamura use the camera to reinforce the insularity of this man’s perspective; as the minutes tick by, the viewpoint remains fixed as he stares out into the darkness of the subway, even as the sounds around him increase in volume. From the start, Kawamura shows us that this “Lost Man” is someone who thinks avoidance will drown out the noise of obligation.
As the man exits the train, he gets a call from his ex-girlfriend (Nana Komatsu), who tells him she’s pregnant and is unsure about whether she wants to keep the baby. Feeling dizzy at both the revelation — and that he’s still underground — the man rushes to find an exit, only to realize that he’s trapped. Every time he turns the corner, he’s faced with the same sights: porcelain hallways, colorful signs, vents, and most disturbingly, a strange man (Yamato Kôchi, impressively crafting an otherworldly smile that’s pure nightmare fuel) who nonchalantly walks towards him but never interacts with him. Getting increasingly paranoid, “The Lost Man” reads text on the wall that tells him how he can escape from this loop: as he walks, if he spots any anomalies, he has to immediately turn around and walk the other direction. If there’s nothing different about his path, he can keep going forward. If he completes this process eight times, he can finally escape, but if he turns around when there isn’t an anomaly, he has to start over at Exit 1.
Once these basic parameters are established, Kawamura’s film kicks into high gear. The fun in these scenes comes from feeling like we, too, are lost, trying to spot the changes in unchanging scenery. Sakura Seya’s editing is worth highlighting, because while scenes are stitched together to place viewers in the man’s headspace, there’s a playfulness in the perspective as well. The camera will often switch from the back of the man’s head to face him directly, and as the audience, we can see looming dangers that are shambling towards him; it puts viewers in the omniscient perspective of being able to see the terrors, while being unable to stop them.
Even if we see the same images repeatedly, we never feel at ease, because the possibility of an anomaly means that the innocuous can shift to deadly at a floor exit’s notice. For example, every time the “walking man” makes his loop and passes by Ninomiya’s character, we wait breathlessly to see if the man will lash out to attack our protagonist. We probably see Kôchi’s man loop around Ninomiya’s weathered protagonist upwards of fifteen times, and each is filled with dread.
It would have been tempting for composer Shouhei Amimori and Yasutaka Nakata’s score to over-announce its presence, but it’s also scary in its repetition. There’s a particular sound that plays every time a corner is rounded, and this reiteration feels terrifying. Like Ninomiya’s wanderer, it’s easy to go mad trying to look for anomalies where there are none, and the score is just one part of the wicked puzzle Kawamura’s crafted to drive viewers delirious.
It’s a fun exercise in form, but there’s a shorter, madcap version of this film that would be perfect. As it stands even at just over ninety minutes, the film sags when it tries to break free from its conceit and offer backstory for the lost man, the walking man, and another character, “the boy” (Kotone Hanase). You can feel the air seep from the tires each time the perspective shifts over to share some new character revelation about the core trio. It’s the equivalent of playing a video game and just at the height of a boss battle or exciting quest, and then you get interrupted by a cut scene that derails the excitement of the moment. Thankfully, these moments are few and far between, ensuring that whenever Exit 8 remains fixed on its circuitous terrors, it remains an unmissable, enveloping nightmare worth replaying many times over.
Exit 8 was reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival. Distributed by NEON, its North American release is TBD.
