'Exit 8' is the best video game adaptation of all time [Cannes Review]

I've been fascinated by what I call for a long time No output horrorA term that I have shaped for a subgenre that is rooted in existential fear, in which characters are caught in singular, oppressive rooms that they cannot escape. Think of such border dream thrillers as DicePresent dead endPresent PontypoolPresent or The epidemic. Of course I took the name of the French writer/philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and how his play like his game No ExitThese films not only capture their characters in rooms, but in rooms of self -denial, regret or moral indecisiveness.

Genki Kawamura is masterful Exit 8Present This had its uncanny and unforgettable premiere in the Cannes Midnight screenings section and uses this trope so effective that it may have been the most extraordinary adaptation of the video game that was ever made.

Adapted from a cult Japanese video game, Exit 8 Follows “The Lost Man”, played with raw and adorable reluctance of Kazunari Ninomiya (Letters from Iwo JimaPresent Gantz). On a tedious underground pendulum home from his desk job, he quickly finds trapped in an endless U -Bahn corridor, which in reality has to grasp subtle anomalies that signal whether it is safe to go to the next output, also known as a AKA level.

He returns at the beginning when he misses something out of place. It is the perfect metaphor for paralysis of modern professional life that is trapped in the endless labyrinth that was designed by the evil of capitalism: the sterile and endless hallway is less a place than a state of mind. He literally does not go anywhere. And I am sure that most of us can find it in some level.

Exit 8 is more than just a stylish horror experiment or the clever staging of a unique and inexpensive IP. It is a tragic and intimate character study after the journey of a broken hero where the monster does not lurk around a corner. The lost man is on the way home of a job that he clearly loathes. He is exhausted, emotionally separated and is in the passive inertia of a life that he never really chosen. And then suddenly fatherhood appears.

The big turn of Exit 8 is that his horror and drama are mostly emotional, not supernatural or science fiction. Kawamura has worked a film about terror to become a parents before they are ready. About the acceptance of love if you are not sure if you are worth it. The anomaly in this man's life is not a shadowy figure or an output path. Instead, it is the terrible view to love someone more than they themselves. And be loved in return. The hallway becomes purgatory for a man who cannot admit that he is afraid – responsibility, commitment and growing up.

Ninomiya's performance is essential here. It's not noticeable, but deep. He plays professionally emotional deafness, with the shoulders of unspoken guilt and generation/gender expectation. There is a calm beauty about how little he says and how much it shows. When change finally comes, it is not triumphant. It's terrifying. And it is deserved.

While the lost man repeats the corridor again and again, each loop becomes a step along a broken, non -linear way to emotional accountability. He doesn't try to escape. He tries to accept. He tries to become someone who is loved and loved in return. And that could be the scaryest journey that a horror film ever asked about a man. And he's not alone. The uncanny and quick introduction of “The Walking Man” is terrifying and then tragic. A perfect side quest during a already flawless main story.

The atmosphere in Exit 8 is based on a similar liminal energy that is felt in brilliant border horror projects such as PT and The Backrooms, but where these stories indulge in abstract terror, Kawamura's film and study of character grow with a teaspoon of hope. Ultimately, there is no clear solution. But it provides reflection. It asks what happens to those of us who live on autopilot. Those who accept careers that we hate, relationships that we do not care and the future we have never chosen. It's about how modern men inherit silence and confuse it with strength. And how love … real, scary, adult love … requires presence and vulnerability. It requires you to leave the loop.

With Exit 8Genki Kawamura has created an urgent warning story for the emotionally paralyzed. It is a masterpiece of “No Exit Horror”: intimate, tragic and impressive human. Forget Boss battles, this is an adaptation of the video game in which the last level is fatherhood and how the process of birth is over.

Tags: Cannes 2025 Exit 8 Posted Post Genki Kawamura

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