Overlook Film Festival 2026: ‘Exit 8’ twists liminal space
Genki Kawamura guides you into a relentless loop.
Liminal spaces have long taken up real estate in horror movies. From 1955’s Dementia to modern fare such as Vivarium and Skinamarink, the subgenre is never short on territory to conquer. With his new film, Exit 8, playing this year’s Overlook Film Festival, filmmaker Genki Kawamura adapts a popular video game into a haunting and brutally surreal journey into the mind of one man’s suffocating guilt. Much like Josh Ruben’s Werewolves Within and John Hsu’s Detention, Exit 8 masterfully gives the drastically different medium a second life. It works far better than it has any right to, driving home themes about silence, complicity, and standing up for what is right.
Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya) heads to the hospital to tend to his girlfriend. On the way, he hops off the subway and treks through winding corridors to Exit 8. But he can’t seem to find it. He becomes trapped in a constant loop in which he must discover various anomalies in the hallways to advance to the next level. His path crosses with The Walking Man (Yamato Kochi), and later, a small boy (Naru Asanuma) begins following him. They serve as distractions—or do they? He’s being tested to see if he actually pays any attention to his surroundings or if he’s simply going through the motions.
Anomalies could be anything. They could be a missing door that was there before, a tweak in one of many posters lining the walls, or something more explicit, like a ghost voice blasting from the overhead speakers. But often, it’s something tiny that he should have noticed but doesn’t. In his desperation to get out, he loses track of the environment and must start over again. It’s brutal torture for him, but a delightful treat for the viewer. Exit 8 relies on simmering tension. There’s always something so slightly off-kilter that it knocks you off your feet. You may not know what it is, but it’s there.
Kawamura, who co-wrote the script with Kotake Create and Kentaro Hirase, brings a floating, ethereal quality to the story. Even if you’ve never played the game, you go in expecting the premise to predictably play out, but there are more than a few surprises up Kawamura’s sleeve. Ninomiya’s performance emerges as a complex portrayal of being trapped in a purgatory of his own making. Exit 8 doesn’t inhabit a literal space. In fact, it transports the viewer into his overactive mind, in which he obsesses over the things he didn’t do to an excruciating degree. We can all relate.
Exit 8 manages to evoke a timely message about speaking, speaking out, and using one’s raw humanity to empathize with those who may be different from you. All the while, it’s a damn good time that immerses you in the Lost Man’s claustrophobic world. Sometimes, you need a pinch of messaging with your horror/thriller to drive home the real-life horrors even more.
