Exit 8 (film)
On a recent flight, the entertainment system had a movie I'd never heard of in its list of recent releases called Exit 8. I watched the trailer and was instantly transfixed.
A couple nights ago, I finally sat down to watch it and I really enjoyed it. It's a sci-fi/horror film about being trapped in a Japanese subway station and that's what drew me in immediately. One day in Tokyo, I spent about 30 minutes walking in circles inside the Shinjuku station, getting increasingly frustrated by all the construction that closed the paths I needed to take to get where Google Maps kept telling me to go.
I love that the entire budget for the film was barely over $1M. We all have such great cameras capable of great things in our pockets, yet most films today are $100M franchise pieces that don't excite me enough to even go to a theater. The movie also has some aspects of Edge of Tomorrow, one of my all-time favorite movies, though it's not exactly like time travel.
It's probably longer than it should be, to be honest, as tense moments are drawn out to stretch this into a 95 minute film. I'd call this movie perfect if it were about 60 minutes long (and more likely aired as something akin to a Twilight Zone episode).
Films based on games
When I was looking up more information about this film, I found out it was based on a small indie game "The Exit 8" that came out in 2023, so I downloaded it onto my Playstation 5. Since I just saw the film, I knew the game's premise and in about 20 minutes I beat the game after a few frustrating loops where I missed some key details.
I'd suggest anyone wanting to check out either of these things to follow my lead and do the film first, then the game. If you played the game, the movie would likely seem slow as it explains game mechanics you already know. It would also spoil some surprises if you played the game first. The movie is much richer in story telling so playing the game after was really a fun little challenge to test myself in the role of the movie's main character and since it was a free game on my Playstation plus pass anyway, it didn't feel like a rip-off to complete the game in just a few minutes.
Lastly, I've seen a ton of films based on video games and they are usually pretty bad but this is a really good adaptation that takes the game as its base and really fleshes out a larger story from there. It's fair to say it might be one of the best video game adaptations to date.
Highly recommended.
