Exit 8 (2026)
Liminal spaces, often empty, sterile, fluorescent-lit rooms and hallways, represent places of in-between, of transition, or on the threshold of one state of being to another, and seem to be a growing theme in movies, especially with the recent A24 release Backrooms (2026) which solely focuses on these places. Increasingly, viewers want to take a deep look into these spaces and process the eeriness. Often, these are rooms or hallways that we pass through quickly, without giving them much thought, but when the Lost Man (played by Kazunari Ninomiya, known from 2006’s Letters from Iwo Jima) gets stuck in a subway station, he realizes he must take a closer look at his surroundings and complete a mission to get out.
His entrapment arrives on the brink a major transition in his life. He has just taken a subway ride with a car full of commuters and a mother with a crying baby. On the ride, one man crashes out and starts yelling at the mother and baby, while the mother quietly apologizes and everyone else acts as if nothing is happening. Then, when he gets off of the subway, he gets a phone call from his ex-girlfriend (played by Nana Komatsu) with news that she is pregnant, and she asks him what he wants to do. It is at this point that the phone goes out and the Lost Man finds himself caught in a subway station loop where he must find anomalies and use them as directions to find his way out. If he misses an anomaly, he must start again from exit zero.
During this mission, he sees several other characters in the loop: the Walking Man (Yamato Kochi), the High School Student (Kotone Hanase), and the Boy (Naru Asanuma). These characters offer different perspectives on the loop that they’re all in, and have intriguingly different ways of spotting anomalies. And as we ride the ups and downs with the Lost Man, we are sometimes met with even more creepy scenes than the empty subway, like blood dripping from the subway station ceiling during the Lost Man’s most desperate moments. Here, director and co-writer Genki Kawamura takes a cue from the classic scene in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to add an element of horror to the film.
If all of this sounds very game-like, it’s because Exit 8 was adapted from the video game “Exit 8,” created by Kotake Create. But it has more depth than you might expect from a movie based on a game, inviting us to contemplate transitional phases in life as well as the physical liminal spaces that we pass through, and to reflect on the nature of making choices. Spiritual significance can be drawn, too, when you consider that eight is a meaningful number in Buddhism, representing the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi (meditative consciousness). Like the Lost Man looking for his exit from an undesirable place, following the Noble Eightfold Path is a way to find liberation from the cycle of life and death to reach nirvana.
The number eight also looks like an infinity sign when it’s on its side, which represents something endless and is how the loop in the movie feels as the Lost Man is repetitively working through different levels of the subway station. Like the mysterious subway station loop, infinity is also something that we cannot understand or fathom. This feeling of endlessness could also apply to the commuters, who offer no help to the mother and have little to no recognition of the world around them, only repeating their cycle of going to and from work. This reminds us of the Walking Man in the subway station, who becomes part of the endless cycle of the loop after making a poor choice. The Lost Man is remorseful of his choice not help the mother in the subway, and admits that for this reason he feels like he would not be a good father.
The music in the film, Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, also mirrors the repetitive cycle of the game, as it builds repeatedly on the same melody and rhythm, encompassing the repetitive theme of the film. It is theme which beckons us to wake up to the world around us and ask ourselves what cycles we are perpetuating, and to find the value in living our lives with presence and consciousness.
