Exit 8: Your Transit Woes Have Nothing on This Bedevilled Commuter

By Chris Knight

Rating: A-

“Based on a video game” may turn away as many potential viewers as it attracts, but you don’t need to know anything about Exit 8’s game version to enjoy this creepy puzzle box of a movie. On the other hand, I’ve heard that familiarity doesn’t breed contempt for it, either.

Japanese multihyphenate Kazunari Ninomiya stars as “The Walking Man,” who witnesses (but does nothing about) some rude behaviour on the Tokyo subway, before getting a call from his girlfriend, who has just learned she’s pregnant.

Heading out of a station — whose design is based on an actual station in Tokyo’s sprawling, complicated transit system — our protagonist stumbles into a sort of infinite loop. Trying to find a numbered exit, he instead ends up treading the same twisted, white-tiled corridor, over and over. And over.

Every few corners is a sign that changes from zero to one to two and so on but frequently resets to zero whenever he breaks one of the vague rules of this commuter trek, most of which involve looking for anything out of the ordinary and turning back if something is spotted.

For a while he manages to spot these “anomalies” as he trudges the same hallway again and again, ticking off advertising posters, signage, doors, and the “walking man” (Yamato Kochi) who passes him like a ghost. But soon things amiss start morphing into disturbing discrepancies and then true terrors, a mix of psychological, supernatural. and body horror.

Writer-director Genki Kawamura keeps his camera angles tight, the better to maintain tension at a boil, and makes the most of his minimal and repetitive set. Fans of the Canadian horror classic Cube should enjoy.

The soundtrack, meanwhile, includes some well-worn classical numbers and a repeating two-tone motif that sounds like a cross between a squeaky subway brake and the kind of public address klaxon that heralds an announcement. Oh, and Sakura Seya won an award from the Japanese Academy for his masterful editing work.

The conclusion felt a touch over-played and a little too didactic, but not enough to spoil the mood. I will say that audiences in Toronto and Montreal (and I guess Ottawa?) may want to take surface transportation home rather than risk going down into the subway. Better safe than stranded.

Exit 8. Directed by Genki Kawamura. Starring Kazunari Ninomiya, Yamato Kochi, and Naru Asanuma. In theatres April 10.