We are back with a double feature weekend horror movie review, and this one comes with a side of mild illness and an Xbox betrayal. Meaghan and Arthur kicked off the episode in good spirits despite
Arthur was in what Meaghan lovingly described as “a weird sort of hybrid stage where you can’t tell if you’re sick or not.” So, yes, he was running at maybe sixty percent. Keep that in mind.
The film we are here to discuss is Exit 8, the 2025 Japanese liminal horror feature adapted from Kotake Create’s 2023 indie video game of the same name. Before seeing the movie, Arthur and Meaghan tried to play the game on Xbox.
The game cost $4.50, but it was not compatible with Arthur’s console, even though it let Arthur purchase it… “Why the hell did it let me pay for it?” Arthur asked, legitimately furious. “Screw you, Xbox. Get your shit together,” Meaghan added helpfully. They watched Markiplier’s full playthrough instead, caught all the anomalies, and felt reasonably prepared for the film. Reader, they were.
If you cannot wait to see Exit 8, but still want to watch a horror movie tonight, check out our 4-question hand-curated horror movie quiz.
Exit 8 had its first screening at Cannes in May 2025, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation. It then saw a wide release in Japan in August 2025, followed by its North American theatrical release on April 10. The hype has clearly been building, and after seeing it, Meaghan and Arthur both think it earned it.
What the Game Is, and Why the Film Is Better
For anyone unfamiliar with the source material: the game places you in the shoes of a character walking through a looping Tokyo subway tunnel, trying to reach Exit 8. You follow a strict set of rules. If no anomalies are present in the hallway, you proceed. If something is different (a doorknob in the middle of a door instead of the left side, eyes that move on a poster, ceiling lights arranged wrong), you turn back. Fail to spot the anomaly, and you restart from zero.
The film keeps that core structure intact while doing something the game understandably never tried: giving the main character an actual inner life. The protagonist, credited only as “the Lost Man” (no character in the film has a name, by design), is introduced on a metro train where a woman with a crying baby is being aggressively berated by a businessman. Nobody intervenes.
He puts his earphone back in. Immediately after, he gets a call from his ex-girlfriend; she is pregnant and does not know what to do. He has an asthma attack. He says almost nothing. He gets off the train and walks directly into the loop.
That is your exposition. And it works because you now understand exactly what this guy is carrying.
Arthur put it plainly:
There’s a lot of kind of like symbolism or themes in this movie.
This psychological horror film circles around societal passivity, the exhausting monotony of daily life, and what happens when someone refuses to make a choice long enough that the universe makes it for them.
Meaghan pointed out that the opening sequence is the whole thesis of the movie. Everyone on that train is staring at their phones, not paying attention. If I see something, do I say something? Or is it easier to just go about my day?
The Walking Man and the Three-Part Structure
Here is the adaptation choice that elevates Exit 8 above being a feature-length spot-the-difference exercise. The film is divided into three perspectives.
Most of the runtime belongs to the Lost Man. But a second chapter follows the Walking Man, a background figure from the game who passes by at regular intervals. In the movie, he is a real character, also trapped, also looping, also desperately trying to get out.
He has his own hallway experience happening in parallel, and he never sees the Lost Man because they are in the same space from completely different vantage points. He is frantic, exhausted, and trying to help a small boy he found wandering alone. The boy, for his part, says almost nothing.
Arthur genuinely loved this element:
They added more meat. They added the whole character, and that there could be a loop for other people.
Meaghan agreed and went further: the Walking Man’s eventual failure is one of her favorite moments in the film. He reaches a set of stairs that reads Exit 0. He knows he has not cleared all eight levels. He knows he is not supposed to go up. But his desperation has hit a point where logic has packed its bags and left.
It’s like cheating in life
Meaghan said. “You try to take the easy way out of something, and the easy way out is to run up those stairs.” The realism of that choice, of watching someone crack under pressure and do the thing they know they should not do, landed hard.
What happens to him after is left ambiguous. The theory floated in the episode is that he becomes part of the loop itself, another NPC, another presence in someone else’s hallway. The high school girl already walking in his tunnel seems to support that reading.
The third chapter brings the Lost Man and the boy together for the final stretch. The boy is a shockingly good anomaly-spotter (which is either impressive or unsettling, depending on how long he has been there). He catches things the Lost Man misses entirely. Whether he is real, a manifestation of the Lost Man’s guilt about the unborn child, or something else entirely is something the film does not resolve. “I don’t know,” Meaghan said. “Was the kid there? Was it part of the whole thing?” The answer is probably: yes to both.
The Craft: Sound, Camera, and the Creep Factor
Meaghan’s second and third favorites both came down to craft, and both are worth talking about.
The sound design is exceptional. So much of the film is quiet, deliberately quiet, which means every sound that does break through lands with physical force. The recurring music cue tied to the hallway return signals progression or doom, depending on the arrangement.
Baby crying sounds bleed through the walls. A banging on a door during one pass-through made both hosts genuinely uneasy. And when the Walking Man deviates from his expected rhythm, when those heel clicks stop, and you hear him turn instead, it reads as wrong before your brain catches up to why.
One sequence near the end involves a tsunami siren, followed by floodwater carrying debris and parts of buildings through the tunnel. Meaghan acknowledged that, for a Japanese audience specifically, that would hit differently. “I was like, wow. That was rough.” The image of the boy lying on the floor in the aftermath is the film’s most emotionally uncomfortable moment.
On the camera side, Arthur came around to Meaghan’s point about the hallway transitions. When the Lost Man turns back and runs, he should technically arrive at the far end of the hallway; instead, he reappears at the start. The cuts that achieve that effect are invisible.
Those things were very well done
Arthur said. “Very seamless.” He did note that his sick brain took a moment to get there. We forgive him.
Final Scores and the Ending You Will Keep Thinking About
Meaghan landed at an eight out of ten. Arthur gave it a solid seven. Both would recommend it. Arthur would probably rewatch it specifically to catch the anomalies he missed the first time around (the misaligned ceiling lights in the first level apparently stumped him because the Lost Man rarely looks up; the film was ahead of him on that one).
The ending loops back to the beginning in a way that is satisfying and deliberately unresolved. The Lost Man is on the subway again. The same woman. The same businessman. The same moment. This time, he takes his earphone out and starts to move.
Does he get out? Does it change anything? Meaghan put it best: “We don’t know.” But the fact that you care about the answer is the whole point. The film made him a person, put him in an impossible loop, and asked you whether you think he has changed enough to break it.
For a 95-minute movie adapted from an hour-long indie game with no named characters and one hallway, that is doing a lot of work. And it earns every minute.