By John Corrado
A man gets off the subway and tries to exit the station. But every time he turns a corner, he ends up back in the same place, stuck in a seemingly endless loop. This is the premise behind the Japanese film Exit 8, a fun and suspenseful little puzzle box thriller from director Genki Kawamura, that also has a deeper metaphor going on about choice and preparing for the future.
The film opens with our protagonist, a commuter known simply as “Lost Man” (played by Kazunari Ninomiya), standing on a packed subway car. A mother cradles her crying baby, a businessman yells at them to be quiet, but nobody intervenes. He gets a call from his girlfriend with some big news, but the station he exits into is its own sort of hell that won’t be so easy to escape.
The man finds himself wandering the sterile white halls of this subway purgatory, instructed to look for “anomalies.” Every time he encounters one, he must immediately go back to the beginning and start again, or the loop will reset. There is a poster on the wall for an Escher exhibit that becomes a touchstone for our Lost Man, but also serves as artistic metaphor for the film itself, with its series of labyrinthian hallways that all seemingly end up back in the same place.
Kawamura’s film is based on a video game by Kotake Create, and it captures the feeling of playing a game, with its various levels that need to be completed, and even some creative POV shots. While the game’s deceptively simple premise could have felt stretched thin at 95 minutes, Kawamura builds in enough story and character details to add dramatic weight to the material. The film avoids repetition by offering enough new “anomalies” and cinematic tricks to keep us engaged, with the inventive production design and cinematography being a a real highlight.
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