Exit 8

EXIT 8   **

Genki Kawamura

2025

IDEA:  When he discovers that he's trapped in a subway tunnel that inexplicably goes around in circles, a soon-to-be father needs to learn a game to find the exit.

*LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD*

BLURB:  Exit 8 reaches the peak of its intriguing eeriness in the first 15 minutes, when first-person filmmaking unnervingly puts us in the shoes of a man who finds he’s trapped in an infinitely looping subway tunnel. Replicating the logic of the video game, the zigzagging spatial layout creates suspense about what surprise might appear behind each monotonously white-tiled corner, while also posing a challenge to the player/viewer’s attention, memory, and perhaps even sanity. Does this maddeningly inescapable space represent the endless grind of workaday life under capitalism? Is it a purgatorial trial meant to test the moral fiber and flexibility of people who have made questionable life decisions? Yes and yes, as Exit 8 makes explicit in a script that has very little faith in its audience to understand subtext. The considerable tension and mystery built up by Kawamura quickly evaporate as more characters are introduced and the story fully flattens into the clichéd, moralizing parable of reluctant fatherhood it teased from the first of a hundred crying baby sounds. When the mute, cherubic “Boy” appears, it becomes groaningly obvious where this is headed, and what the protagonist will have to do to redeem himself and secure his escape. To their credit, Kazunari Ninomiya invests gravitas in his paper-thin protagonist-avatar, and Keisuke Imamura’s camerawork nimbly navigates shifting character perspectives and vectors in a confined space. It’s too bad they’re stuck serving a script that never really advances past Exit 1.