It opens with a whisper, not a scream. A man wanders a sterile corridor, eyes fixed, steps measured. There's no music, no jump scare, just the quiet hum of fluorescent lights and the slow unraveling of sanity. That's Exit 8 —a time loop horror that doesn't want to scare you with ghosts or monsters, but with the creeping dread of repetition, of being watched by something unseen, of realizing you've passed that same vending machine ten times and still don't know where Exit 8 is.
I've seen a lot of loop films. Groundhog Day was charming. Triangle was brutal. Coherence was smart. Severance was surgical. Exit 8 ? It's the first one that made me feel like I was the one going insane. And yes, it's based on a video game—The Exit 8 , available on Steam—and the influence is obvious, but not in a bad way. It borrows the best part of games: the obsessive, detail-oriented playthroughs where missing one tiny thing means starting over. In this film, the same rule applies.
Kazunari Ninomiya and Yamato Kochi star in a premise as simple as it is maddening: a man is trapped in a seemingly endless subway passage. He must observe everything, miss nothing, and above all, find Exit 8. But the loop resets with every oversight. One misplaced poster. One extra step. One flicker of light. And he's back at the beginning.
The trailer, released by Umbrella Entertainment has a clinical chill to it—like a Saw film without the blood, or The Shining without the axe. It premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Midnight section, which makes sense. This isn't your popcorn horror—it's the kind that sticks with you, the kind that makes you question what's real the next time you walk through a subway station.
Genki Kawamura, the director, has form. He worked on Mirai , Suzume , and The Colors Within . He's no stranger to emotional storytelling. But here, he trades warmth for unease. The screenplay, co-written with Hirase Kentaro, is tight—no wasted words. Just rules. And rules are meant to be broken. Or at least, hard to follow when the world around you keeps shifting.
Now, I'll admit, I'm getting tired of the time loop trope. It's been milked, stretched, and regurgitated more times than I care to count. But Exit 8 does something different. It leans into the repetition, makes it the horror itself. There's no reset button. No explanation. Just a man, a corridor, and the slow erosion of his grip on reality.
And I like that. I like that it doesn't explain itself. I like that it trusts the audience to follow along, to lean in, to notice the anomalies. I like that it doesn't give you a monster to fight—just yourself, your own attention span, your own ability to keep track of what's real and what isn't.
This isn't a film for everyone. It's not loud. It's not flashy. It won't win Oscars for spectacle. But if you're the kind of viewer who appreciates atmosphere, who enjoys being unsettled not by what's shown, but by what's implied—then this is one to watch.
Japan gets it first, opening this August. No word yet on a U.S. release, but I'll be keeping an eye out. And if you're like me—someone who still remembers the first time Cube or The Others hit just right—then you'll want to find your way to Exit 8 when it finally opens.
Just don't blink.
