Dallas Fisher

For someone who doesn’t play many video games anymore, Exit 8 certainly helped me feel like I was right back in that medium.

Most of the time, video game to movie adaptations are exaggerated to an egregious level that is only meant to churn box office dollars and entertain masses of children. This movie was thankfully a seamless adaptation that still held itself to the same standards of a game in its genre. I would also describe this as a real visual page turner, where every moment had me wanting to know what was going to happen next, immediately. Feeding into the first and third person perspectives, it really felt like I was the one playing the game, but not being able to make better decisions is what I would call infuriating.

If you look at the fine print, it is missing some bite that I was hoping for. It certainly heavily relied on the psychological side of the horror, without being able to follow the rules of the others. I never played the exact Japanese game this is based off of, but it reminded me of P.T. That demo game I had installed on my PS4 long after it was announced it was never coming out. Both that game and this movie gave me an internal anxiety attack. To also say they are equivalent of doom scrolling would be an understatement.

Even though it’s not exactly like the others, I would call this a time loop adjacent movie. Sure, the characters aren’t exactly reliving the same moment, they basically are but just in a physical sense. That space is a never ending subway and I loved the almost blank look of the set design that was ultimately its own character. The subway walls had the most depth to them, as I felt the characters lacked almost all that depth. Exit 8  has a very deep message on society as a whole and it’s also a struggle to look past how much of a nightmare it makes babies seem.

This movie will forever be an anomaly in the horror space that I feel everyone should experience once, even if it probably works better in 60 minutes of hands-on gameplay.

6.5/10