The Exit 8 (Kotake Create, 2023)
Developed/Published by: Kotake Create / Playism
Released: 29/11/2023
Completed: 26/09/2026
Completion: Finished it!
It’s October, which it means it’s time for spooky games. Which is a great excuse to finally play The Exit 8 (yes, that’s its official title). I watched Backrooms back in July having not previously engaged with the liminal space horror genre before and I… well, I found it underwhelming to the point I couldn’t be bothered to give it a proper review on Letterboxd. I found the parts of the movie that were the most “video gamey” the most interesting though: the idea of this “level” to explore. Mapping it out. The unknown threats. And then I found all the “this is a movie, not a ‘Let’s Play’” stuff really… cringe? Probably because, like everyone, I’m tired of every horror movie being about trauma.
I am pleased to say that neither The Exit 8, nor its cinema adaptation, are about trauma!
To be honest, The Exit 8 isn’t really about anything. It’s a game of pure sensation. When you describe it, it doesn’t really sound like anything. You’re trapped in a Japanese subway station corridor. If there’s something in the corridor that looks different, or something odd is happening (an “anomaly”) you should turn back. If there isn’t–move forwards. If you can manage to do this 8 times in a row, as in make your way forwards/backwards through eight different corridors, you win.
It sounds like… first-person spot the difference. And I guess, mostly, it is. But The Exit 8 is a great example of the one night game–you know, a game that you pick up and you play through in one evening (or any time of day you can set aside.) I last experienced this with Many Nights A Whisper, last year’s exp. GOTY, and while The Exit 8 isn’t quite to that level, it’s similarly deserving of your complete focus in one playthrough.
In fact, I don’t think it would work as well if you put it down and came back to it. I started The Exit 8 a little too late (should really have been in bed) and it was perfect, because I felt trapped. I was trapped in this corridor and couldn’t go to bed until I left it. The Exit 8 isn’t forgiving. If you make a single mistake, you have to start again right from the beginning. Because the game is so short, it wouldn’t work any other way (for what it’s worth, I finished it in an hour, but a “perfect” playthrough would be a handful of minutes.) Each time you miss something, you’re crushed–and you’re confused and annoyed with yourself. “What did I miss?” you’ll ask yourself. “I checked everywhere!” you’ll think, unable to bargain with the game–and you can’t even go back and check.
The Exit 8 is interesting, because it’s not particularly scary. It is, however, excellently unnerving. There will be several moments where you turn the corner and immediately nope out of there because of what you’ve seen; other moments where you push a little forward, knowing it’s an anomaly, but needing to satisfy some curiosity. It’s a classic sort of haunted house, really–you choose to frighten yourself.
The Exit 8 isn’t exactly horror–so it’s perhaps not the perfect way to kick off October (no draculas or wolfmen here!) but it’s a brilliant way to spend an hour. With the right parameters, it’s immediate and visceral in a way that it feels only games can be.
Exit 8 (2025)
But of course, they made a movie of it! Dropping the “The” no one usually notices it’s a savvy adaptation of the game layering story on where there isn’t one (and not even making it about trauma). It cleverly opens in first person, making you think it might be a completely straight adaptation–as an unnamed protagonist, having just received news that his ex is pregnant, suddenly finds himself in the corridors of Exit 8–but as soon as he’s in the corridors the camera pulls back and we get a more traditionally shot film.
What’s interesting about that, though, is that it really pulls into stark relief the difference between movies and games. I just saw Resident Evil, Zach Cregger’s take on the legendary franchise, and one of the things I liked about it was how inspired it was by the actual form of video games rather than just the narrative: the forward momentum, the hero’s progression via increasingly powerful weapons. But even with that, you could never say to yourself “oh, it was like I was playing the game.”1
In Exit 8, you kind of feel like you are playing the game. Because The Exit is “just” spot-the-difference, right? And so when you’re watching Exit 8, and you catch the anomalies, it’s kind of got the same pleasure as in the game. When the hero ends up back at zero, it’s a gut punch, almost the same.
But it’s not the same. There’s an authored gaze, and every anomaly you “spot” is served, from the very first one. The focus, the movement of the camera, the positioning on screen. You’re being played, not the other way around.
It’s a movie that invites an active viewer, but I admit that I kept waiting for the anomaly that wasn’t shown to me, that I had to truly catch myself, that never showed up.
In The Exit 8, you’re on your own. If you miss something, you’ll never know what it was. If you don’t move forward, the game will never end. It’s funny to say that experiencing game and film back to back had me feeling pandered to simply by the nature of cinema. “Pfft, it shows me what I need to know? It plays itself? Christ, baby much?”
Exit 8 does, however, do a great job imbuing the setting with meaning–even shifting viewpoints to do so. I was surprised by how moving I found a segment that (in the game) feels like a throwaway The Shining riff, for example. The Exit 8 in becoming Exit 8 becomes a story not about just observation but engagement: truly engaging with the world around you. It’s not about seeing the right thing, but doing the right thing, when it matters, and living up to the potential of what you can be.
This is enriching in retrospect to The Exit 8, and I did wonder–would this have worked if it was there to begin with? Funnily enough, no. Ironically, the moments of struggle and catharsis must be out of our hands. We can’t learn about ourselves what the protagonist of Exit 8 does to do the thing he chooses to do, and it always sucks when they make those moments a cut-scene. Exit 8 only works as a movie the way The Exit 8 only works as a game. One with full control, one with none. One where you embody the struggle to escape, one where you empathise with it.
Both The Exit 8 and Exit 8 are great–and they work perfectly one after the other; in fact, I’d say it’s the only way to do it. Play first, though. You’d spoil the game in a way that you can’t spoil the movie playing them out of order.
Will I ever play it again? Not sure if I’ll give Platform 8 a shot or not. I know it’s short, but I appreciated this experience so much that I kind of want it to be singular, you know? Er, even though it involved two different forms of media. So a… plural experience?
Final Thought: The Exit 8 is particularly fun if you’ve visited Japan and have any experience of Japanese train stations, because you’ve almost certainly: got lost in them, and have a fondness for them anyway. I appreciate that what starts as a “oh, it’s just like I’m there” quickly becomes “I’ve got to get out of here!”
- Something I think that’s interesting–but don’t really have a place for–is that both Exit 8 and Resident Evil are based on video games, and both are concerned with the anxiety of “growing up”, in fact having protagonists with the exact same dilemma (an unexpected baby on the way.) To prod at the anxieties of an audience in a permanent adolescence feels savvy in a way that Backrooms’ ironically backwards-looking tropes don’t, and I wonder if we’ll see a sea change in horror themes to fears for our future (considering… everything) rather than attempting to suppress our past. ↩︎