The instructions are simple: Do not overlook any anomalies. If you find an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you do not find any anomalies, do not turn back. Go out from Exit 8. The instructions hang on the wall, where all who enter the switchback tunnels of this particular subway station can see them. Go one way, if you see something weird turn back. If you don’t, move forward. The layout is always the same: a starkly lit, tiled hallway, a left turn and then a right, lockers, a photo booth, and posters on the wall. Or is it?
Exit 8 is an incredibly straightforward film -a man stuck in an endless hallway- but it reveals things much deeper than anyone would expect. As our hero, The Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya) enters the puzzle (it doesn’t feel right to quite call it a maze), he’s just hung up with his now-pregnant ex-girlfriend. The train he was on had a screaming baby, and a rude man berating that child’s mother. His breathing was difficult because of his asthma. And then he was stuck, moving back and forth, each new turn down the hallway revealing some piece of himself through increasingly intense existential nightmare fuel each time he passes the sign for Exit 8. Whether that’s The Walking Man (Yamato Kochi) ceaselessly and emotionlessly (except when he’s not) walking toward him or something more visceral, best for you to discover on your own.
The premise -adapted from the game of the same name- is thin enough that it rests almost entirely on the performances. Ninomiya acquits himself well, and while he sometimes ventures into over-the-top territory he never does so inappropriately. By the time he’s writhing on the floor in despair, that despair is entirely earned as his journey has been reset yet another time. Yamato Kochi, who plays The Walking Man, does double duty, first as the unnervingly steady walking man and then as a point of view character who is revealed to also be stuck in the hallway. These two personas are so different, one scary and one pitiful, and he is entirely convincing as each.
The third major character is The Boy, played by Naru Asanuma. Just a child, and rarely speaking, Asunama’s performance has the earnest innocence you’d expect from a child his age, one lost and alone and stuck in the company of adults he doesn’t know, but perhaps more observant and intuitive than any of them.
With each of these players in place, cinematographer Keisuke Imamura and director Genki Kawamura are able to craft something that is unsettling, at times downright scary, and ultimately cathartic. Exit 8 is the kind of film that reminds us why we need smaller stories, that the endless hallways of our commutes and offices may seem bare but can ultimately reveal much about not only ourselves but also the world. That sometimes the greatest key to enlightenment isn’t overstimulation but rather an absence of it, and a quiet moment to pause and pay attention.
Exit 8 is now in theaters.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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