Review of EXIT 8: Loopy Labyrinth

September 20, 2025

An old man was berating a mother with a crying baby on the train. Bothered by this, a young man decided to alight at the next station. While he was walking on his way out of the station, a young man received a phone call from his recent ex-girlfriend who told him that she was in the hospital. She called to tell him just found out that she was pregnant. This news unsettled the man to have an asthma fit, and the choppy signal made things worse for him. 

When the call was dropped, the young man eventually noted that he had been walking around in circles while trying to reach Exit 8. He kept on passing by a certain corridor with a series of posters on one side and doors and vents on the other side. He would see a tall man emerge on the other end of that corridor and he would walk past him. After going through the same things a number of times, he realized he was trapped in an endless loop.

This psychological horror film was based on a 2023 video game called "The Exit 8" developed by Kotake Create. Japanese filmmaker Genki Kawamura wrote and directed this film version, recreating the atmosphere of claustrophobia and paranoia that made the game popular. The object of the game was to spot "anomalies" in order to decide whether to go forward (if there was none) or to turn back (if there was one). An error would reset one back to Exit 0.

The numeral 8 was chosen for this concept because as seen on print, it is does not have a visible beginning or end, just one curving line crossing itself in the middle like a Mobius strip. One of the posters in the corridor was about an art exhibit featuring works by 20th century Dutch artist Mauritz Cornelius Escher. His famous work "Relativity" depict architectural optical illusion of people going up and down an endless maze of stairs -- an obvious inspiration.

At first there were only two guys -- the main character called the Lost Guy (Kazunari Ninomiya), and the Walking Guy (Yamato Kochi), who walked past Lost Guy every time he passed under the Exit 8 sign in the main corridor.  We certainly felt Ninomiya exasperation and frustration, as well as his asthma-induced dyspnea. Walking Guy was supposed to be an NPC (non-player character) only, but Kawamura also chose to give him a back story. Kochi

In the opening scene, Kawamura followed Lost Man in one amazing long single tracking shot from the train to the Exit 8 corridors. Being shot in Lost Man's point of view really made us feel his ever-growing anxiety and desperation. Kawamura then added the Boy, a helpless child in the loop who is likely a metaphor for Lost Guy's ex's pregnancy. While these dramatic detours added depth to the story, they did also distract much from the build-up of suspense. 7/10