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Despite releasing in Japanese theaters last year, Exit 8 just began its theatrical run in North America on April 10. With its new run comes a new wave of critical reviews, which has catapulted it into rather rarified air on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
The film, at the time of posting, is sitting at 95% based on 91 critical reviews.
Although that’s an incredible rating by any metric, it places it far out in front in terms of video game film adaptations, with it eclipsing the previous bests, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Werewolves Within, which share an 86% rating.
Just like the game of the same name, which was released in 2023, the film follows a man trapped in an endless, sterile train station corridor that loops endlessly. If he’s unable to identify the anomalies, he’s sent back to square one.
I’m personally fascinated to see how they adapt a fifteen-minute game into a feature-length film, but they did it for Battleship, I guess.
Frank Wilkins, of Reel Reviews, scored the film 3 out of 5, stating: “Taps into that universal feeling of being stuck on autopilot, of moving forward without ever really progressing. It is horror rooted not in monsters, but in the quiet terror of ‘sameness’.”
Chuck Bowen, of Style Weekly, said: “Director Genki Kawamura has made a pocket-sized Kubrick movie here, utilizing symmetry as a signifier of a crisis of reality met with indifference by gods who probably don’t exist anyway.”
Exit 8 is releasing in select Australian cinemas on April 23.
