Movie Review: Exit 8

4 stars out of 5

Once I got over the disappointment that Exit 8 wasn’t a movie about driving to Hightstown and East Windsor on the New Jersey Turnpike, I really started to enjoy it. I know we’re in an era where an increasing number of motion pictures and TV shows are based on video games. I am not a gamer (there are 4 games on my phone, and 2 are Scrabble variations) and I had not heard of the game Exit 8. Yet I was intrigued by the concept of someone stuck in underground subway walkways – as anyone who has tried to get from the F train to the PATH at 14th and 6th would understand.

The plot, and there’s not much of it: A guy in Japan is taking the subway to work. As he gets off the train, he receives a call from his recent ex. She’s at the hospital, she’s pregnant, she’s deciding what to do… and he loses the signal. He’d better exit the station. Through exit 8. Except… he can’t find it. And realizes he’s going around in circles.

For a while, this comes across as an extended Twilight Zone episode. And if you like that sort of thing – which I do, very much – then the movie is pretty enjoyable. (And most of the signs in the station are in Japanese, making it even more delightfully confusing for us non-Japanese viewers.) But writers Genki Kawamura (who also directed) and Hirase Kentaro keep adding slight differences, which in the movie are called anomalies, which slowly raise the stakes, and raise the level of the drama. Kawamura maintains a claustrophobic vibe throughout, with touches of horror and comedy.

How much of this was straight from the video game? Well, and this must be a compliment to the filmmakers, because I spent $2.99 to download the game as soon as I got home. Of course I couldn’t figure out the controllers, because I’m an old goat. But it looks very much the same as the world in the movie. And it also looks very much like the upcoming movie Backrooms, which seems to be the same concept except in a deserted Raymour & Flanigan’s. Yeah, I’ll probably see that too.