Finally a decent video game adaptation where it isn’t just a 1-to-1 with no new additions or just a collection of things from the games being dangled in front of you.
- Director – Genki Kawamura
- Runtime – 95 minutes
- Certificate – 15
- Country -Japan
It follows ‘The Lost Man’ (Kazunari Ninimiya) and him being stuck in this loop after finding out his ex is pregnant in which he must find ‘anomalies’ to get out. Immediately from that you could spend hours theorising the symbolism and thematic connotations (more later) but I’ll go into from a film perspective first.
You would think that it would get repetitive being in the same place over and over again while he is trying to find anomalies. For the most part it surprisingly doesn’t.
When you think everything is going to be okay and he’s getting the hang of the loop, it throws something else at him. Does his reaction get slightly annoying when he takes too long to react? Yes. But given the circumstances I think most people would behave the same.
Unfortunately, I think that writing decisions leads to my biggest gripe and that is the pacing. At times this really drags due to him always investigating the anomalies further to make sure they are indeed an anomaly. Obviously they can’t have him go through it too fast because then the film would be over in about half an hour but after a while it gets to a point.
Technically as well it doesn’t get repetitive. Similar to Iron Lung, it’s set in one location so there is only so many ways they can move and position a camera inside an underground station. Yet they manage to get by. The camera constantly follows the characters and the direction they are looking and is rarely still. When it is static, it’s always framed so that you can’t really see what’s behind him or so that he is the centre where you can feel how lost he is inside this loop.
Back to the themes and symbolism. There is genuinely so much you could say about it. The first is that he is fighting within himself about whether or not he is ready to be a father – the film basically beats this over your head. However, I don’t think that’s all it can be reduced too.
What makes me say that is because of the other characters of ‘The Walking Man’(Yamato Kochi), ‘The Woman’ (Nana Komatsu) and ‘The Boy’ (Naru Asanuma). While watching it’s obvious the Boy is meant to be The Lost Man’s unborn child but it’s the other two. They mention guilt as a cause to being there and describe the place as a Hell or Purgatory. Based on that, I kind of believe that living in fear of being a father he was going to ask her to get an abortion but must overcome his fears and change his ways.
The production design is phenomenal. Watching behind the scenes and seeing all the sets built and how ‘The Walking Man’ had to get from one of the set to the other was amazing. In all honesty it should nominated for the Oscar but because it’s a small indie horror film that’s based on a video game it absolutely won’t. But having being picked at Cannes last year who knows.
Exit 8 is wonderful video game adaptation that uses the mechanics while telling its own story and adding lore to characters from the game. With countless hours of theorising its symbolism and terrific production design, this should be the standard for video game adaptations.