Hallways, generally speaking, are not places you want to be in the movies. You can be just strolling down one when, all of a sudden, elevator doors open up and a river of blood comes flowing out.
They are often corridors of violence 鈥 the site of the hammer rampage of 鈥淥ldboy鈥 or the rotating fisticuffs of 鈥淚nception鈥 鈥 where narrow walls buffer and condense the action. Or they can focus a character鈥檚 direction. To set Lee Marvin鈥檚 appropriately named Walker on his obsessive path in the revenge thriller 鈥淧oint Blank,鈥 John Boorman just needed to send him and his ominously echoing heels down a hallway.
But a new film by the Japanese director Genki Kawamura, is the first movie I can recall to land in a hallway, and stay there. The movie opens in first person, from the perspective of a guy on a crowded Tokyo subway. Like everyone else, he鈥檚 looking at his phone.
While he huffs and puffs his way off the train and up the stairs (he has asthma), he fumbles with his earbuds. He pauses from his music 鈥 a curiously march-like tune by Ravel 鈥 to speak to a woman on the phone. She鈥檚 in the hospital and they need to make a choice. He mumbles that he鈥檚 on his way before the line cuts out.
As he shuffles through the throngs of commuters in the byzantine underground, he turns toward signs for Exit 8. But after he passes down a hallway, he鈥檚 mystified to end up back where he started. At first he assumes he made a wrong turn, and hustles down the Exit 8 corridor again, only to, again, arrive at the same spot.
Of all the nightmarish puzzles the movies have conjured, 鈥淓xit 8鈥 is among the most devilishly simple, and, as it turns out, metaphorically rich. Kawamura鈥檚 film is based on an indie video-game sensation, 鈥淭he Exit 8,鈥 where first-person players are ushered down a tiled metro tunnel (almost exactly like the one in the movie) and don鈥檛 escape its repeating loop until they grasp the game and make it from one level to the next.
So, yes, has company. You could, realistically, enter a movie theater right now, walk down the hall, follow signs for the video-game adaptation, and stroll unaware not into the Nintendo escapade but into the Kafkaesque labyrinth of 鈥淓xit 8.鈥
Such a detour, I鈥檇 say, would be advisable. By its nature, 鈥淓xit 8鈥 is sparse and repetitive. But in the not-especially-decorated annals of video game adaptations, it鈥檚 one of the most compelling and clever meldings of the two mediums 鈥 cinema and gaming 鈥 we鈥檝e seen yet. It was an enormous hit in Japan.
The game, itself, is spartan. But while the movie keeps the game鈥檚 premise and even much of its central gameplay intact, it suffuses it with just enough backstory to expand and deepen it. Kawamura鈥檚 previous film, 鈥淎 Hundred Flowers,鈥 seen through the eyes of a woman with dementia, was also predicated by a seemingly restrictive point of view. In 鈥淓xit 8,鈥 he levels up a bare-bones game with humanity.
Our guy鈥檚 name is never spoken. He鈥檚 credited only as The Lost Man, and played by Kazunari Ninomiya, a pop star who was a standout in Clint Eastwood鈥檚 鈥淟etters From Iwo Jima.鈥 We only get a look at him once the hallway starts repeating and our perspective shifts. After going around in circles, he notices instructions on the wall: Turn back if you see any anomaly, proceed forward if you don鈥檛.
The Lost Man begins counting every vent, door and poster (including a very fitting Escher one) along his way. Part of the trick is deciphering what constitutes an anomaly and what doesn鈥檛. There鈥檚 a very robotic commuter who walks past every time 鈥 The Walking Man (Yamato K么chi) 鈥 and, at one level, a boy (Naru Asanuma) in the middle of the corridor. Making it to Exit 8 may be a game, but passage ultimately hinges on seeing 鈥 really seeing 鈥 those around you.
That鈥檚 why the image that鈥檚 likely to stick with you after the film isn鈥檛 the sterile subway hallway that's overwhelmingly where the movie resides. In this M枚bius strip of a movie, it鈥檚 those first moments on the subway, when faces lit by smartphones choose not to notice an anomaly: a man shouting at a mother with a crying baby. 鈥淓xit 8鈥 may be based on the thinnest of conceits, but bringing it into the realm of cinema means opening it to the possibility of empathy. The marching music in The Lost Man's earbuds may be a call to arms, after all.
鈥淓xit 8,鈥 a Neon release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for some bloody images and terror. In Japanese, with English subtitles. Running time: 95 minutes. Three stars out of four.
