Directed By Genki Kawamura
Starring – Kazunari Ninomiya, Yamato Kochi, Naru Asanuma
The Plot – A man (Ninomiya) trapped in a endless sterile subway passageway sets out to find Exit 8. The rules of his quest are simple: do not overlook anything out of the ordinary. If you discover an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you don’t, carry on. Then leave from Exit 8. But even a single oversight will send him back to the beginning. Will he ever reach his goal and escape this infinite corridor?
Rated PG-13 for some bloody images and terror
POSITIVES
Very few video game properties have both the effortless adaptability and fascinating concept to transfer seamlessly to feature length cinema, but Exit 8, full of its situational ambiguities and deeper metaphorical meanings not only conjures an unsettling approach to psychological horror that revels in the claustrophobic confines of inescapable repetition, but also an elaborately absorbed and detailed production among its execution that makes this a faithfully resonating adaptation that even its most hardcore of gamers can entertainingly indulge in. From the opening shot involving a man listening to a mother being berated in a subway for her crying child, to the ensuing on-screen text conveying nameless characters defined singularly by their loosely fitting titles, it’s clear that Kawamura values subtleties as a means of many audiences immersing themselves into the familiarities of the characters and their anxieties, rather than the particulars of heavy-handed exposition, allowing the audience to hang onto every pivotal interaction or sparsity of detail as a means of wholeheartedly immersing ourselves in the plight of this perilous man, especially once the subway itself transforms into this atmospherically ominous rat maze that grows all the more effectively unsettling with each passing deviation, the likes of which are unexpected, based on our preconceived expectations. While ambiguity certainly drives the conversational study of just what’s transpiring psychologically before our very eyes, there’s enough vital breadcrumbs to the periodic insights of characters’ fears that help us to grapple with a bigger picture of realization transpiring at the surface level of this frantically uncontrollable chaos, where my own personal interpretation certainly pertained to the expectational fears of parenting, such as the life-altering news that our main character receives at the movie’s beginning inspiring a selflessly involving demeanor to his exacted actions throughout the movie’s journey, that vividly conveys the extent of his emotional and mature change. In addition to this, there’s also an underlining meaning pertaining to the construct of industrialism, featuring these everyday ants aboard a train who walk their proverbial figure 8’s everyday (Infinity), but ultimately get nowhere and remain trapped in their respective paths. This certainly gives the film a nihilistic outpouring that might make it bitterly difficult for some audiences to attach themselves firmly to the narrative, but I found Kawamura’s direction feeling very insightfully experienced and consequentially responsible for the fantastically exaggerated ways he illustrates life, especially when seen through the perspective of this Lost Man attempting to find his way to the next phase of his life, standing within a purgatory crossroads of his proverbial past and metaphorical future tugging him in respective directions, the likes of which feel equally scary and morally compromising to the person whom he expects himself to be. As a result, the film is inescapably repetitious, as it remains mostly faithful alongside the depths of its compelling gimmick, but there’s certainly enough heart and empathetic merit attached to these characters and their individualized arcs to attach onto them in ways that helps ease the pressure of derivativity within a 90-minute runtime, where Kawamura himself certainly relishes in the beat-for-beat strategy of the gameplay, while also extending the experimental exploring of the narrative in ways that make him a vital addition to its naggingly persistent execution. Aside from the storytelling and metaphorical layering, the production from Kenta Tsutsumi is downright immaculately immersive in bringing this plunging purgatory vividly to life, such as the subtle deviations of the set designs and restless riveting of the score from Yasutaka Nakata, whose instrumental rendering of themes lifted directly from the game finds itself to the thickening dread of the atmosphere, that conjures relevance to the realization of its characters. On the former, not only do the designs enact an exact recreation of the textures that can be found in the game’s levels, featuring encompassing porcelain white tile that clashes confoundedly with the movie’s lighting schemes, in order to convey an unattainable grasp on the passage of time, but also embellishes in some elaborately staged horror imagery that ups the urgent anxieties of the character’s slow and steady approach on surveilling, allowing for intensity in carefully measured pay-offs, in order to elevate the monotony of inescapable claustrophobia to counteract with something far more sinister to the subconscious. As for Nakata’s panic-inducing themes, my initial confusion over supercharged almost military marching compositions during the movie’s opening minutes, gave way to darkly foreboding danger that materialized over the startling realizations of characters making inevitable mistakes in the trepidation of their journeys, such as the signs of each level constantly shifting to reflect the actions of the characters, inscribing a haunting exclamation point accompanying so much of the imagery that had my nerves riding the same waves of relentlessness that the characters find themselves in with something truly bigger and more elaborate than any of them could’ve ever expected. There’s also plenty of room for prominence among the minimally limited but strongly stirring performances of this ensemble, particularly Kazunari Ninomiya’s turn as The Lost Man, whose constant mental exasperation effectively elicits a helplessness and corresponding empathy for the character that keeps so many of the movie’s wheels turning throughout so much aforementioned ambiguity and repetition. Like anyone forced to deal with inescapable dread putting them at an adversarial disadvantage, Ninomiya channels the vulnerable fear, riveting panic, and regretful remorse of a character on the brink of life-altering change, where a palpable but undefining form of emotional immaturity corrodes his extending outlook in ways that undervalue matters that should feel like blessings, and while Kawamura’s script responsibly keeps many of the details of the character’s backstory free from the storytelling, there’s a naturally nuanced demeanor to Ninomiya’s deliveries that flourish affirming depth to the candidness that he brings to character, affording him the stoic shoulders to maintain the weight of majority of the movie’s focus firmly upon them.
NEGATIVES
Even with an extensive absorbing of what made the video game a cherished commodity among cultists gamers across the globe, with a trio of characters steering the script’s individualized chapters, there’s still a considerable underdevelopment to the fleshing out of this psychological world of purgatory that kept me at a distance from understanding some of the ins and outs with how this trap works, almost entirely as a means of remaining committed to never overstaying its welcome with a 90-minute runtime. While I commend any video game adaptation that values urgency, I feel at a grave distance from randomly introduced and unfollowed through characters and the staging and sequencing of the gameplay within the movie that obscured some of the randomness from what these characters are interpreting, especially with nearly every one of the level stages brandishing an anomaly that conveys in them to turn back. If the script worked more of the rooms into not having an anomaly in them, then it feels like it would’ve been even more difficult of a challenge to the characters, as well as tense to the nerves of transitioning into the next room with the fear of possibly overlooking someone, but more times than not the movie garners an unavoidable anomaly as a means of making matters as easy and digestible to avoid the complexity of possibly stirring tediousness to audiences already conflicted by repetition, and as a result we lose a lot of the trial and error of the gameplay that undercuts the difficulty of this conflict’s magnitude, especially once the convenience of a child character is introduced to navigate matters a lot easier. In addition to some lacking world-building, my only other hinderance on the film pertained to the air of its horror, which is so barely realized in the depths of two sequences that it never attains reflective notoriety for it being designated firstly with the genre, leaving the ambition of limitless chills free from a concept that practically demands for them. I can certainly commend Kawamura for putting the metaphorical meaning and commentary first, above thrilling imagery, but there’s so many scenes where it feels like more is going to transpire from set-ups that feel plucked directly from the learning tree of horror tangibility, and considering so many of the film’s riskiest moments of material already feel bite less, with some distractingly obvious outpourings of computer-generated artificiality enacting them, the lack of imaginatively elaborate or expansive pay-offs left certain scenes along the way stacking with unfulfillment, leaving the pacing a bit stretched during the moments when it started to get interesting.
OVERALL
Exit 8 is a hauntingly persisting and elaborately staged labyrinth puzzle of a gaming adaptation that relies on the air of ambiguity and devilish details to allure audiences into a sense of a meaningfully dreadful deeper purpose. With stunning intricacy for deviation in set designs, claustrophobically isolated direction from Genki Kawamura, and a grippingly emotional leading turn from Kazunari Ninomiya, this psychological thriller validates the argument for being one of the absolute best gaming adaptations of all-time, even with some shallowly superficial details to the extent of its sprawling scope, that threatens to derail its high-speed storytelling off of the tracks.
My Grade: 8.4 or B+