Exit 8

If you know me, you know that I love horror films, and to some extent horror games as well. Through this dual love for the genre across the interactive divide, I actually tried The Exit 8 back in its infancy, mostly because this specific setting appealed to the part of my brain that played Kojima's P.T. over and over again and mourned the loss of the game it could have been.

If you are not familiar with The Exit 8, the premise is simple: a person takes the underground, just like any other day, but instead of the traditional route down and up ending in a stairwell, it... loops around. Suddenly, you are trapped, caught in a circular knot, and not only that; you are, in a way, not alone in these otherwise clinical white underground walls.

Here we find our main character, "The Lost Man," frantically trying to keep his nerves calm as this clearly paranormal experience unfolds, but at the same time, just like a player in the interactive version, it's about staying calm, pragmatic, and consistent with the task at hand, which is painted so directly at the entrance to each loop. It's about spotting irregularities, and if you find one, turning back. If not, continue straight ahead.

It's child's play, if you can spot them, and the film presents this duality between performing this task in a relatively clinical manner, in line with our increasingly stressed protagonist, while at the same time wondering and being frightened that this is even... well, happening.

Director and screenwriter Genki Kawamura clearly wanted to let the game's interactive, structural goals be the narrative nerve of the film, and instead of giving this enigmatic but compelling premise a little context, he focuses entirely on the game's single, direct premise of, you guessed it, "spotting irregularities, and if you find"... you know what I mean.

It's a bit of a double-edged sword, because even though The Exit 8 isn't particularly scary (neither is the game), you're left with the feeling that it could have been more effective if it had dared to take a few chances with its source material. Perhaps a little shadow here, a pair of staring eyes there, a little more suspense building between these systematic walkthroughs of the clinically white metro corridor.

But at the same time, you have to give Kawamura credit for being faithful and blindly trusting that the innovative premise and the aesthetic profile and design language of the single location are enough on their own, and that is indeed true. The film is well acted, solidly constructed and choreographed, and, as you can probably sense, there is not a single extra gram to cut away. This is minimalist filmmaking, even if it can be a little boring in places.

However, The Exit 8 follows in the wake of a number of other strong film adaptations of games that not only respect the source material, but directly trust that it alone can win over the viewer. It's pretty cool, even though I would have liked it to have dared to be a little more than that.