Liminal space is scary enough without overanalyzing – and to be honest, I never once thought about what the Backrooms, or even those viral photos and videos of abandoned '80s malls, could be a metaphor for… until I watched Exit 8. The film, which serves as an adaptation of the popular Japanese video game, pulls us out of reality and into a series of unending fluorescent-lit hallways, only to make us examine our own lives from a new perspective (both figuratively and physically).
The movie stars Kazunari Ninomiya as The Lost Man, a young man who learns that his girlfriend is pregnant while smack-dab in the middle of his daily metro commute. As he begins to panic (because he is in no way ready to be a father), he becomes lost in a series of corridors that start to endlessly loop. He quickly learns that he's stuck in some kind of sadistic game. The rules are simple: each corridor has its own set of features; if The Lost Man walks through a corridor, and nothing seems out of place, he can proceed to the next one. If there is an anomaly (i.e. a doorknob where there shouldn't be, or a sudden flood of rats), he has to walk back to the corridor he came from… and if he doesn't, he finds himself back at Exit 0. The goal, of course, is to reach Exit 8.
On the way, The Lost Man encounters The Boy (Naru Asanuma), a child who is abandoned by his father in the corridors… only to become the permanent NPC known as The Walking Man (Yamoto Kochi). The Lost Man and The Boy begin to trust each other, trading stories of running away from home in hopes that their mothers would find them, and ultimately decide to find a way out together.
About a boy
The Boy is the heart of the film, and the one who makes both The Lost Man, and the viewer, examine their own lives and choices. At the beginning of the film, The Lost Man sees a woman being scolded by another man on the train for having a crying baby – and this is just moments after he learns that his girlfriend is pregnant. The Lost Man observes the situation, and, like the rest of the people on the train, goes back to looking at his phone. But, unlike other passengers who choose to remain blissfully unaware, he feels an immense amount of guilt that makes him question whether or not he'd even be a good parent in the first place. It's here that he panics and has an asthma attack... and suddenly finds himself in the corridors.
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"I commute on the trains in Tokyo during rush hour, and I noticed this myself while on the train: everyone's looking at their smartphones," director Genki Kawamura tells GamesRadar+. "I think it's a very self-centered type of mood. And I think that also kinda shows the state of the world that we're in right now. And this act of ignoring it and going on with our daily lives, I think we're all guilty of this on, on some level. So I thought, well what if we took that small layer of guilt and projected it onto this very sanitized white corridor? I think that in itself would be very, very terrifying."
A dream within a dream
When you really get down to it, it sort of becomes its own Russian nesting doll: generally speaking, humans are afraid of liminal space because of the unfamiliarity, similar to the way any space becomes liminal to a child when they're left alone without their parents, and being lost and alone in a liminal space because of a natural fear of the unknown and what could be lurking around the corner… it's just a nightmare on top of a nightmare on top of a nightmare.
"I think what liminal space and these games offer is an exploration of a dream-like space, or a nightmare, if you will," Kawamura says. "It creates that type of feeling and vibe. And in that setting, I think we're able to pull out the biggest fears that we all carry with us every day. Monsters, ghosts, those are scary, but it's all external. I think going within these secret rooms that exist in our mind is much scarier in terms of the psychological effect."
When The Walking Man sees the false Exit 8, The Boy refuses to go with him and won't let go of his hand because he notices all of the anomalies. Instead of agreeing with his child, he throws him to the floor and happily runs up the stairs. When the corridors reset back to zero, The Boy sees his father walking… but it's in a trance-like state. He only looks ahead, and doesn't seem to acknowledge anything around him. The Boy tries to get his attention, but The Lost Man tells him to give up. "That isn't a human anymore," he says to The Boy, rather matter-of-factly. It's a one-two punch for the viewer: your own father abandons you… and then you have to see him walk on loop over and over again while he never ever even acknowledges your existence… because you're lost in the very same loop. A nightmare on top of a nightmare.
Exit 8 isn't the movie I thought it was going to be, and I'm glad. I appreciate what Kawamura and co-screenwriter Kentaro Hirase decided to do with a video game about being lost, taking his own daily train commute, and putting it into the fictional corridors of Exit 8. The viewer (and The Lost Man) has two choices, notice the anomalies or ignore them. The same can be applied to our own lives, and whether we decide to make a difference… or continue on an endless loop.
Exit 8 is in US theaters now and arrives in UK cinemas on April 24. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
