‘Exit 8’ review: The most nightmarish spot-the-difference you’ve ever experienced

If you’ve ever felt like a lab rat in a hellish maze trying to get out of a subway station, you need to pay attention. Exit 8.

Based on (and replicating almost exactly) Kotake Create’s acclaimed 2023 game, director Genki Kawamura’s adaptation is an incredibly meticulous piece of cinema. Fans of the game will be shocked to see these iconic corridors come to life; Newcomers will have the opportunity to experience the exhilarating escape room for the first time.

At once a masterpiece of game-to-film adaptation, a stylish and nail-biting horror thriller, and a technical cinematic marvel, Exit 8 locks you in and leaves you struggling. You’ll never see your travels the same way again.

What is Exit 8 about?

Kazunari Ninomiya and Naru Asanuma in “Exit 8”.
Credit: Néon

To call the Kotake Create game Exit 8 a walking simulator is an understatement. This masterpiece of environmental storytelling is essentially a nightmarish spot-the-differences experience that ties players in knots when it doesn’t leave them terrified. Like a Möbius strip, Exit 8 sends you on a seemingly endless loop, traveling the same mundane but unsettling subway corridor beneath Tokyo over and over again, with the only chance of escaping a mysterious set of instructions: If you find any abnormalities, turn around immediately. If you don’t find any anomalies, don’t go back.

Kawamura and co-writer Kentaro Hirase expand this three-act puzzle, establishing a compelling protagonist, exploring other characters (including a standout performance from Yamato Kōchi as The Walking Man), and adding a recurring theme of fatherhood. We meet an anonymous man (an exceptional Kazunari Ninomiya) on his way to his temp job on the Tokyo subway. He’s crammed into a train car with thousands of other silent travelers, all glued to their phones in a deeply familiar image. When an upsetting confrontation arises, he simply turns up the volume and walks away, the bystander effect in full force. He receives a loud call from his ex (Nana Komatsu). When he attempts to leave the station, he finds himself trapped in a mysterious looping corridor, tasked with confronting (and identifying) frightening oddities: a half-open door, the sound of sudden footsteps nearby, an exaggerated and disturbing smile.

Although a seemingly simple concept, the themes that run through this maze are complex, from the drudgery of 9-5 to the weight of major life decisions to the concept of limbo. What is this place? An Escher experiment? A modern version of Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell? Kawamura will leave you frantically searching for meaning as you search for aberrations on screen.

Exit 8 is a masterpiece of cinema, from production design to cinematography

It’s perfect.
Credit: Neon

The first time our “Lost Man” turns a corner Exit 8In the all-important hallway, my jaw hit the floor. Production designer Ryo Sugimoto, set designer Yutaka Motegi, lighting designer Tatsuya Hirayama, and production designer Yutaka Motegi perfectly recreated Kotake Create’s generic subway setting down to the smallest detail, from the graphic design to the harsh lighting and those cruel white tiles. It’s a magnificent feat to construct this seemingly endless corridor for uninterrupted shots, captured with meticulous precision by cinematographer Keisuke Imamura.

Lengthy one-shots track Ninomiya’s superb, overtly physical performance as he frantically attempts to escape the hallway and survive the ominous jumps, many of which are the work of visual effects supervisor Seiji Masamoto. The game itself uses a first-person perspective with every step, turn, or movement in space, functioning as player-powered cinematography, and Imamura channels this expertly in Exit 8, executing a hypnotic and unsettling walk through those dreaded corridors.

However, none of this would be as hard without Exit 8Masaya Kitada, sound editor and supervising foley artist. Sound becomes a real weapon in Kitada’s hands, creating fear from the crisp click of footsteps and the buzz of fluorescence, or terrifying you straight from inside a locker. Make sure to see this movie with a monster sound system.

Exit 8 you will also play spot the difference

The key game mechanic of Exit 8spotting anomalies, also functions as the narrative engine of the film, as the protagonist studies the few coherent elements of the corridor in order to spot anything that is wrong. Some abnormalities are obvious, while others are microscopic. In the latter case, deciding whether an anomaly really is an anomaly becomes as risky a decision as deciding it is not. It’s maddening, this state of constant flux between boredom, frustration, drudgery and pure terror.

Thanks to Imamura’s calculated cinematography, the audience is also able to play along in some instances where we desperately scan the screen to identify an anomaly before the Lost Man – there were more than a few moments where I pointed, pantomime-style, at the screen wanting to shout “IT’S BEHIND YOU!” Certainly, fans of the game will be less frightened by the surprising nature of the anomalies, as experiencing them during a first playthrough is as unsettling as watching the movie.

While video game adaptations range from sublime to mediocre, Exit 8 is a triumphant achievement and expansion of the original concept. Kawamura’s meticulous direction and his incredibly talented cast and crew amplify this confined corridor in satisfying and frightening ways. You’ll be in this hallway long after you’ve left the cinema – we’re all still staring at that Exit 0 sign.

Exit 8 is now in cinemas.