Few online game variations perceive their supply materials fairly just like the Exit 8 movie. It takes the principles and construction of the sport — which strands gamers inside a looping hallway in a Tokyo subway station — after which builds on them with precise characters and a narrative. And in response to director Genki Kawamura, one of many causes that the film feels so recent could possibly be due to how he approached it. “I wasn’t essentially fascinated with a movie adaptation of a online game,” he tells The Verge. “I used to be fascinated with how you can create a brand new cinematic expertise that blurs the traces between online game and cinema.”
The 2 are very related, and the movie even begins out with the sport’s first-person perspective. And like the sport, the film options an individual stranded inside a hallway that repeats itself, and the one method to get out is to identify “anomalies” — mainly, bizarre shit that adjustments in every loop — after which change instructions. Kawamura says that he found the sport as a result of he performs a number of indie titles, and he was instantly attracted by simply how very similar to Tokyo the area felt. However he additionally realized the premise may make for a way more common story. “I felt like lots of people who dwell in cities have had that have of getting misplaced in a passage like that,” he explains. “I felt like combining the Tokyo design and the very common expertise may create one thing cinematic.”
However turning the sport, which has no characters or story and lasts lower than an hour, right into a film required including a number of components. The principle character, identified solely because the Misplaced Man (Kazunari Ninomiya) is scuffling with each holding a job and the potential of turning into a father when he encounters the unusual, looping hallway. Whereas there, we meet different characters, together with the Strolling Man (Yamato Kochi), who begins out as a supply of terror, together with a younger lady (Nana Komatsu) and small boy (Naru Asanuma), who’re equally trapped. There are additionally new anomalies that weren’t within the sport, and Kawamura says the thought was to create unsettling moments that associated to the surface world. For Ninomiya’s character, as an example, this implies some fairly creepy baby-related sound design.
Probably the most fascinating issues concerning the movie is how every character approaches the principles of the hallway, which require rigorously inspecting the environment earlier than deciding whether or not to stroll ahead or backward. Some take their time, some rush, they usually all have a look at issues in a distinct order. It’s a bit like watching completely different individuals play the sport — which was precisely the intention.
Kawamura says he had a dialogue with Shigeru Miyamoto, during which the famed Tremendous Mario and Legend of Zelda creator instructed him “ online game is enjoyable to play however it’s additionally enjoyable to look at any individual play.” So a number of the inspiration for the characters got here from locations like YouTube, the place the inventive workforce watched playthroughs of the sport to see how gamers strategy and react to issues. “Everyone seems to be enjoying by the identical guidelines and in the identical area, however every participant makes completely different errors, they usually have completely different reactions to every failure,” Kawamura says. “And I believed that due to that, the character of the person participant involves the floor.”
In case you have performed the sport, watching Exit 8 is a surreal expertise. It takes place in an area you already perceive intimately, after which twists it in new and uncomfortable methods. Kawamura had an analogous expertise on the set itself. The hallway was constructed on a sound stage and consisted of two corridors — nicknamed Hitchcock and Kubrick — linked by a small pathway dubbed Mizoguchi. Kawamura says this construction allowed the workforce to create lengthy, steady photographs that made it look like the hallway was looping. The concept was to confuse viewers — although the filmmakers weren’t immune.
“It was instrument to disorient the viewers,” he explains. “Even we received confused about the place we have been on set in the course of the shoot.”