Train stations in the big Japanese cities can be labyrinthian but usually not as bad as what you see in 2025's Exit 8 (8番出口). A young man trying to leave finds himself repeatedly walking through the same corridors with strange instructions on the wall. It's a clever and effectively eerie idea. Apparently it comes from a video game of the same title. The movie uses this concept to tell a story about a young man's reluctance to start a family.
The young man (Kazunari Ninomiya) has a girlfriend who's pregnant. As he tries to find the right way out of the train station, there's a consistent background tension surrounding his delayed decision as to whether he will commit to his girlfriend and child. I was reminded of Me Me Me, the GAINAX video designed to compel young men to step away from fantasies and start normal families. The trouble with both cases is they present the decision as being between an endless, soulless rut and a perfect life with a beautiful woman. The audience knows it's not a fair argument and even happily married people are likely to recoil from such heavy-handedness.
Ironically, though, Me Me Me is really sexy and Exit 8 is still effectively creepy, especially if you've spent a lot of time in Japanese train stations. The young man's reluctance to help the woman functions like a moral flaw in a horror movie protagonist so the audience senses he's a ripe candidate for demoniac justice.
Exit 8 is available on Shudder.
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