Just ahead of another liminal space movie hitting theaters, Exit 8 is leaving and making its way to digital. Genki Kawamura’s video game movie arrives on home rental formats this week, bringing the neverending loop of terror right to our living rooms.
Exit 8 is adapted from the Japanese video game of the same name, originally released in 2023 by Kotake Create. The game allows players to step into the role of an unseen protagonist trying to escape the neverending passageway of a Japanese metro station. The synopsis for Kawamura’s adaptation, which stars Kazunari Ninomiya and Yamato Kochi, is as follows:
A man trapped in an 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?
“We all go through seemingly mundane routines while encountering subtle signs that something is ‘off’ in the world, and while they may seem like small fragments, they reflect a deeper reality,” says Kawamura. “The endless corridor could be a purgatory that confronts us with our wrongdoing — or perhaps it’s a metaphorical womb reflecting our eternal recurrence. Do we ignore these signs and become lost in a world with no exit? Or do we acknowledge them and head toward the light? Whether we know it or not, these are decisions we make every day.”
Exit 8 is the first of two films being released this year that deal with the phenomena of liminal spaces. A24 is also releasing Backrooms this month, based on the viral 4chan thread about a series of interconnected, neverending rooms that exist outside of reality.
Exit 8 hits digital on May 8. For a deeper look into the film, check out our interview with Kawamura here.
