Hey everyone. How are we doing out there today?
A totally normal greeting for a totally normal blog post, if I do say so myself. Things are not going as swimmingly as I’d like. My life has been a non-stop rollercoaster since Megaplex, which I still haven’t completely talked about and shared pictures from.
My two (three) jobs, my anthology story for Rho Iota Phi (Which closes in less than a month), and the shattered pieces of my mental health have kept this little chee very busy over the past two months.
So, in this little cherished spare time I have managed to not waste by staring longingly into the abyss, I put on a movie. Shudder. A subscription service you could never get me to fully give up.
I’ll be honest, I’ve been letting the subscription services go to waste unfortunately (all besides Dropout.tv because Game Changers, Crowd Control, and Make Some Noise are literally the highlights of each week) and I need to get back to the other two I have.
Now, Exit 8 is a game where you are walking through a hallway. A repeating hallway, that kind of looks like the hallway in a train station. Every instance of the hallway looks the same, except some of these instances of repetition have anomolies.
I haven’t played this game myself, but seeing games like this played on Youtube by the likes of Markiplier, Gab Smolders, and other games is really nice. Almost like a comfort watch.
Having seen this game be played enough times, I figured I’d enjoy it.
And boy, am I enjoy it. That’s right folks! I am writing these notes as I am watching the movie.
Exit 8 is a movie adaptation of the game (The Exit 8) made by KOTAKE CREATE, and was written and directed by Genki Kawamura (and co-written by Kentaro Hirase.) Fun fact! was born on March 12th, which means we share a birthday! The movie was released in Japan on August 29th of 2025, in the US on April 10th of 2026, before finally releasing on Shudder on July 17th. The film stars Kazunari Ninomiya as our main character, a lost man trying to find his way out of a looping liminal space.
From here in the post, my comments will vary and be either well-thought-out praise or cryptic confusing side comments. So if you don’t spoilers, or to be confused, click away and go watch Exit 8 on Shudder now!
The first thing that I noticed about this movie, is that it’s no longer just about finding anomolies as you work through each looping hallway. There’s a deeper theme here. At the moment of writing this, it looks like fatherhood or the avoidance of the role is playing a big part in the way our main character acts/reacts to his circumstances.
The change from a normal subway station hallway to the familiar white tiles of the looping hallways kicked off the coolest setting reveal I had ever seen. The setting looks like it was ripped from the game itself, and it is fucking beautiful. Beautiful and eerie. The posters, the doors, the vents. Everything appears to have been built to emulate the game.
Giving the main character of a horror movie that heavily features walking is Criminal!
Gosh. The way Yamato Kochi goes between being the creepy, smiley version of the walking man to just being a normal dude is peak acting.
Letting this man get five floors is before falling all the way back to zero really just shows how devestating it was to miss something in this game. And the crash out was totally justified. Also… Where is the Walking Man? Why hasn’t he started walking yet?
OH! The hallway was a whole different color!
Seeing a stranger random boy in the repeating hallway and immediately going nope and turning around is so valid. WAIT WHAT?
THE WALKING MAN HAS HIS OWN STORY ARC?! Oh wow, okay. This is a nice twist. Not exactly sure what is going to happen from here. But I really like this.
Yes. It is sad. Doing the same thing every single day, letting the repetition become almost second nature is so very… very sad. Yeah. This was definitely the right movie to watch for relaxation.
Lots of baby themed scares. Makes me thing this is part of the theme of fatherhood. Did they turn this movie into an allegory on being a dad and the main character is just struggling with accepting that he is/will be a father?
Also! The random boy is a part of the story. Has been for a bit now. He’s a sharp one. I wonder if the kid is a part of the liminal space and is the future son of the main character. If so, that’s extremely clever and I love it.
This is hitting a lot of the main anomalies from the game, I’m noticing. Along with some new ones. There is a difference in one of the hallways that apparently is not considered an anomaly. The Mobius Strip on the poster at one point becomes occupied by large ants. Creatures that live by hard continous work, routine… Living each day in service of themselves or someone else. Every day. Endless. Looping.
Yep… This was definitely the movie I needed to put on to recover from the long work week. >.>
Where is The Lost Man? Where did he goooo? Oh. Never mind. He’s okay. Good! BUT now the boy is gone? Does this mean I was correct?
Ending the movie like that was a good choice. Because it almost leaves you in suspense. Like, is he doomed to start the loop over again? But no. It leaves with him moving to take a different action than he did at the beginning.
Did you vibe with this? Did you skip to the end just to see my review?
Well, honestly. I thought the movie was pretty well done. The film was a good, faithful adaptation to the game with some extra flavoring tossed in with the repeating liminal spaces. The acting was incredible, and the setting was absolutely beautiful. Like the actors themselves were inside the game itself.
On a scale from 1 to 10, this movie is an easy 8.75/10. I really do feel like this is the type of movie that you could watch alone or with a group of friends. The type of movie that I’d really like to watch again… and again… and again… and again… and again…
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