We need more unique and clever video game adaptations like Exit 8

Of the nearly 300 movies at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Exit 8 is arguably one of the most unique. After all, it’s TIFF 2025’s single video game adaptation, and it’s got particularly distinctive source material, to boot.

For the uninitiated, developer Kotake Create’s Exit 8 is a 2023 adventure game in which you have to escape a looping Japanese subway tunnel. But if anything, that’s more exciting than it sounds. There are no Resident Evil-style monsters pursuing you, challenging enemies to fight or even any other sorts of big obstacles, really. Instead, you simply walk through the nondescript tunnel and look out for “anomalies” like missing doors or altered signage in the environment. Should you see such an anomaly, you have to turn back. If everything looks normal, you can proceed. Each correct move gets you closer to Exit 8, and you’ll complete the game upon finally reaching it.

The Exit 8 game. (Image credit: Playism)

All told, most people will beat the game in under an hour. And outside of what I just described to you, there really is no overt narrative to speak of. You don’t know anything about your character, there is no dialogue whatsoever, and the supernatural nature of the tunnel is never explained. It’s basically just an abstract puzzle game.

And yet, there’s an oddly compelling nature to this bite-sized experience. Because you’re left in the dark about what’s really going on, it becomes a decidedly introspective journey in which you’re left to project yourself onto the blank-slate avatar and ponder upon the meaning of it all. In this way, the minimalist environment becomes a character unto itself, as you become intimately familiar with its eerily shiny walls, colourful “kawaii” posters and the single archetypal Japanese businessman who silently passes you on each loop. This, in turn, creates a novel sense of psychological horror, as the dozens of anomalies can manifest in surprisingly unsettling ways, like the salaryman suddenly walking much faster or a Shining-esque pool of red liquid flooding the tunnel towards you.

Naturally, then, a feature-length live-action adaptation is a bit of an odd sell at face value. How do you take an interactive experience that’s so brief, ambiguous and off-kilter and translate it to the big screen for 90 minutes? Impressively, though, director and co-writer Genki Kawamura (A Hundred Flowers, Your Name) and co-writer Kentaro Hirase do a stellar job of simultaneously remaining faithful to the core experience of the game while adding in more narrative elements to sustain the longer runtime.

Right off the bat, the film opens with a young male simply referred to as “The Lost Man” (played by Kazunari Ninomiya, a member of the Japanese idol group Arashi) on a packed subway car, putting you in his shoes through a first-person perspective that deftly evokes the feelings of claustrophobia and fatigue of being in this setting. After exiting the train and getting a life-changing phone call, he walks through a tunnel, only to find himself trapped in it. It’s a simple but effective opening to get us into the headspace of our lead, providing clear emotional stakes for his quest to escape. It also roots the anomalies in his deeper insecurities, paving the way for a surprisingly touching coming-of-age arc.

Wisely, though, Kawamura knows that one of the most effective parts of the game is its ambiguity, and so the larger mysteries surrounding this tunnel remain unexplained. On top of that, the film meticulously recreates the exact structure, objects and even salaryman from the game’s tunnel, giving those who’ve played it that added level of engagement as they get to view the familiar setting in a fresh way thanks to new anomalies conceived for the silver screen.

The film is also just impeccably shot, with long single-takes and close-up shots of the protagonist making you feel like you’re trapped in the tunnel with him. It also helps to build up suspense whenever he’s rushing to the end or turning around, as you never quite know what will be around the corner. (Mercifully, though, Kawamura avoids using this framework for obvious jump scares.) All the while, the film plays with POV in clever ways that the game never could, showing us a few more characters who add weight to our lead’s journey.

The Lost Man, played by Kazunari Ninomiya. (Image credit: Neon)

All in all, Kwamura’s Exit 8 works both as a faithful video game adaptation and a solid psychological thriller in its own right. And beyond that, it’s just refreshing to see such an unexpected game to be turned into a film in the first place. Often, highly cinematic experiences like The Last of Us or sprawling lore-rich RPGs like Fallout and Cyberpunk make up the bulk of live-action game adaptations. While many of those are undoubtedly good, they also only make up one side of what gaming can be.

Exit 8, then, is refreshing. By taking a game that doesn’t have any sort of preexisting story or characters, the filmmakers were challenged to get creative. The result is a film that smartly recontextualizes the creepy setting and structure of its source material through a deeper narrative, offering something meaningful to both fans and newcomers alike. It’s exactly the kind of off-kilter video game adaptations we could use more of.

Exit 8 is set to release in theatres sometime in early 2026. In the meantime, the game costs $4.99 and is available on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles, as well as Android, iOS and Meta Quest headsets.

Image credit: Neon