Exit 8 is a video game developed by a single developer, Kotake Create, who was inspired by liminal spaces and horror. It has inspired the film adaptation of the same name, with Genki Kawamura as the director and co-writer. The film has been critically received, with a 94% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Exit 8 film follows The Lost Man, played by Kanunari Ninomiya (Letters from Iwo Jima), as he discovers that he’s trapped in a loop in a Japanese subway station.

“What gave me a hint on how to approach this film was that I had a panel with Nintendo’s Miyamoto Shigeru about 10 years ago,” Kawamura tells Nerd Reactor. “On this panel, he said, ‘Really good games will entertain the players, but they’ll also entertain the people watching the player and watching the screen.’

“From that, I looked at the video game landscape at large, and we have the video game players, and we also have streamers. And we have people who watch other streamers. I thought if there was some way to take what’s happening in the video game world and capture it in this movie, it would provide this unique and new type of experience within movie theaters.”

The Corridor as a Character

The supernatural element is this corridor that traps the humans in an endless loop, unless they are able to identify the anomalies.

“First, we were following our human characters, and then we’re invested in their stories,” the director explained. “But more and more, as I got invested in the film, I began to see the corridor itself as one of the characters, if not the main character of the film. It’s almost like a giant monster or creature. And within it is this yellow, Exit 8 sign that’s overlooking like a god or divine being watching different humans wander into its domain.”

Building Two Identical Corridors

One of the techniques in capturing the endless loops in the film is the use of two identical corridors on the set.

“With the POV of video games, there aren’t going to be any cuts,” Kawamura said. “That’s the nature of video games. They’re constantly viewing the world through your perspective and camera. I wanted to capture that expression in that oner, that super long shot. In order to do that, we actually built two identical corridors in one set and linked them in the middle. So the shot you’re probably talking about was physically looped and shot practically during production.

“An instance of that is The Walking Man walking past the camera at the end of the corridor. He actually had to get on a bicycle, ride to the beginning of the first corridor, catch his breath, and come walking down again. And that’s how we were able to do it, by doing it in a very analog way, and having him walk as though he’s a CG character. We gave it that feeling of a video game loop.”

About Exit 8

Synopsis: A man trapped in an endless sterile subway passage sets out to find EXIT 8. The rules of his quest are simple: do not overlook anything out of the ordinary. If you discover an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you don’t, carry on. Then leave from Exit 8. But even a single oversights will send him back to the beginning. Will he ever reach his goal and escape this infinite corridor?

Exit 8 released in U.S. theaters on April 10, 2026.