If that plot summary looks minimal, that's because there's minimal plot to summarize here. In the 95 minutes it takes to watch the Exit 8 movie, you could complete two average-length play-throughs of its video game source material. If you're really good at the “spot-the-difference” game, that could even be six play-throughs. That makes The Exit 8 a curious choice for adaptation: how do you keep such minimalist material engaging at feature-length?

Genki Kawamura, a bestselling author and hit-making producer (he's worked on every Makoto Shinkai film from your name. on and every Mamoru Hosoda film from Wolf Children to BELLE), has some good instincts for directing and co-writing (along with Hirase Kentaro) this live-action adaptation. The most obvious of these instincts is that the film's nameless protagonist, credited as The Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya), has to suck at the game. The more he fails trying to get through the subway, the more opportunities for fun, creepy visuals.

The film's opening shot places the viewer right into The Lost Man's perspective with a first-person long take. This means when he arrives in the repeating hallways, it looks exactly like the game, but we also get a few minutes of background on his character before he gets lost: he's an asthmatic, doomscrolling expectant father who's too passive and cowardly to stand up to a man bullying a mother and infant on the train. The Lost Man's backstory gives the film some psychological drama, while the mysterious setting is wisely left unburdened by backstory.

When The Lost Man's story starts to wear thin, Kawamura extends the story by switching perspectives: first to the jump scare-inducing Walking Man (Yamato Kochi), the one human figure ever shown onscreen in the game, and then to The Boy (Naru Asanuma), another “player character” of sorts lost in the exits. The perspective shifts give the film some variety, making it so The Lost Man isn't just talking to himself the whole movie, but they aren't quite enough to overcome just how repetitive the “gameplay” gets over the course of a full movie.

Technically, this is an impressive production. The long-take cinematography keeps everything flowing beautifully, while edits in the right places prevent the style from turning into a gimmick. The repeating set is a perfect recreation of the game that also makes for effective homages to Kubrick's The Shining. The sound design is exceptional, with the film's scariest moments heavily reliant upon sound. The sound effects stand out more than the score by Shoji Amimori and Yasutaka Nakata, but all the audio elements come together.

With its stylistic strengths, Exit 8 would make an amazing short film. As a feature, it's just good enough to enjoy (boosted in my estimation by a very satisfying ending), but overall, it's neither scary nor thoughtful enough to overcome the way its repetition lost my full interest during its middle stretch. It's an exercise of style over substance, an extended Let's Play video with a big budget — still one of the best video game-based movies out there, but that's still faint praise.

Ahead of Exit 8's North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Neon announced it will release the film in US theaters sometime in 2026. Neon's acquisitions tend to fall in one of two categories — buzzy marketable horror and distinctive international films from Cannes — so it makes sense they went for a film that fits both of them, even if it's far from the best example of either