When Japanese video game company Kotake Create published The Exit 8 in 2023, it became an instant cult hit.
Initially released on Steam, and later on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S, Android and iOS, this walking simulator was an utter original.
Players find themselves in a Japanese metro subway passageway stuck in an endless loop as they try to figure out clues on how to remove themselves from the hellish trap.
It is hard to imagine how this might be adapted into a movie. But that did not stop director Genki Kawamura, whose adaptation of the game has just premiered in the Midnight Screenings strand at the Cannes Film Festival, ahead of a planned August
The film – just called Exit 8 – stars Kazunari Ninomiya, a popular Japanese singer-songwriter, actor and member of J-pop group Arashi, as the trapped man. As in the game, he must look for anomalies in the passageway to progress. If he sees one – a poster on the wall looking different, for example – he needs to turn back. If he does not find any differences, then he must simply press on.
