Review: Exit 8

Poster for the 2025 horror film Exit 8

For the most part, adaptations of video games have been treated as any other media adaptation: take the aspects people love about the source material, and try to remold them for the silver screen. Exit 8 does this, but takes the responsibility of adapting the game one step further; it attempts to adapt the experience of playing the game.

The Exit 8 is a first-person walking simulator adventure game that was released in November 2023. The player walks through the same hall of a Japanese metro station while adhering to a simple set of rules: look carefully for any anomalies (changes to the space’s status quo), continue forward if there are no anomalies, go backward if you spot an anomaly. The goal is to correctly assess the space for anomalies in order to reach Exit 8, which leads the player out of the hallway.

Screenshot of the game The Exit 8

Similar to I’m on Observation Duty, The Exit 8 primarily plays on two of the player’s emotions: fear and frustration. Some anomalies are so minor that they’re overlooked, and the player finds themself walking from the hall of Exit 5 right back to the beginning hall of Exit 0. On the other hand, some anomalies are so apparent that it’s clear which way the player needs to turn to reach the next exit; the trick is that sometimes, those anomalies specifically engineered to cause a fear response in the player, which can lead to delayed reaction time or a morbid sense of curiosity as to what will happen if the player just lets the animation play out.

First and foremost, Toho’s Exit 8 is adapting that experience. Very little time is spent establishing the main character, a young man (credited only as The Lost Man and played by Kazunari Ninomiya) who’s grappling with the news that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant. Rather than sit with what that information means for him or how these new circumstances will affect his life, the film focuses on the immediate goal in front of The Lost Man: leave the metro station and meet his ex at the hospital.

He is almost immediately met with a unique obstacle: he wanders into a hallway that he seemingly can never escape. The Lost Man gradually learns the rules and nuances of this mysterious hallway and starts making progress toward actually leaving. His progress is not linear; sometimes he misses anomalies as a result of being too confident, and sometimes all he can do is watch in horror as an anomaly overtakes him.

Naru Asanuma as The Boy (left) and Kazunari Ninomiya as The Lost Man (right)

This is a core part of playing spot-the-difference games. Human emotion takes over and overrules logical thinking, which often causes the player to miss an anomaly or fail to take the correct action in response to an anomaly. In The Exit 8, both cases lead to the player turning the very familiar white-tiled corner to see that they are back at Exit 0.

It’s this specific part of the gaming experience that Exit 8 captures so well. The characters’ frustrations and anguish are effective not just because of the great acting and tension-building on display - those moments are effective because the target audience has felt those exact feelings playing the game.

I don’t believe that you have to be familiar with the game or games like it to empathize with these moments. After all, the reason games like The Exit 8 make players feel such strong emotions is because they rely on the player feeling bad about failing and dreading the loss of their progress toward victory. Those feelings are not exclusive to video games - dealing with failure and the non-linear nature of progress is an integral part of the human experience.

But, Exit 8 isn’t just about a video game. It isn’t even about some supernatural, otherworldly predicament that taunts the characters with the promise of an elusive end. Much like the game, Exit 8 is about cycles, about the cyclical nature of the human experience. This is most noticeably demonstrated by the poster of M.C. Escher’s “Möbius Strip II”, which portrays nine ants marching along an infinity symbol that has no beginning or end. The cinematography is informed by this idea of cycles, as the film makes use of long shots that show the characters performing the same actions again and again and turning corners that lead from the end of the hallway back to the beginning.

Surprisingly, this video game adaptation’s most significant exploration of humanity’s cyclical nature comes in the form of a theme not present in the video game: the anxiety of fatherhood.

There are three characters whose time in the liminal maze is shown: The Lost Man, The Walking Man (played by Yamato Kochi), and The Boy (played by Naru Asanuma). All three of their journeys are marked by the absence of a father: they either didn’t know their father, they are currently an absentee father missing an important moment, or they’re both. Based on the information and context the movie gives, it can be theorized that all three characters are related to one another and are stuck in a cycle of failing at fatherhood or being failed by a father. It can also be theorized that all three characters are one in the same; The Boy was The Lost Man, and The Lost Man will become The Walking Man. Seeing the characters in either of these ways connects the film’s interest in fatherhood with its obsession with cycles and puts the horror experienced by all in the context of generational trauma and the fear of failing as a father.

Overall, Exit 8 is a unique take on video game adaptations that only occasionally puts adherence to its source material’s vibe over the enjoyment of the audience. The scares are at the very least fun to see, and up until the last act when the dullness of repetition begins to set in, the film does a great job at building and sustaining tension. Exit 8 is a fun, experimental addition to the genre of video game adaptations that will hopefully inspire more filmmaking teams to take interesting, bold swings with future adaptations.