There really aren’t many good video game movies out there. Sure, you have wildly successful video game movies that can be thrown-together slop that relies on brand recognition, like A Minecraft Movie or The Super Mario Bros. Movie, but those could have been 90 minutes of someone playing the game and they still would have been hits. Most of the “best” video game movies only have reviews in the 60% range on Rotten Tomatoes, so even the titles that put more effort into their adaptations are just somewhat successful. With Exit 8, we might have gotten one of the most authentic video game adaptations of all time, though with the source material being a game that can be won in minutes, it’s hard to call that much of an accomplishment.

In the original video game, you play a character trying to get through a subway tunnel to Exit 8. The rules are simple: if you see an “anomaly,” you turn back, and if you don’t see an anomaly, keep going. In director Genki Kawamura‘s film, an unnamed man (Kazunari Ninomiya) exits the subway train to his temp job and gets a call from his ex-girlfriend to say she’s pregnant. As this man reflects on the information, he realizes he’s seen the same solitary figure walk past him multiple times. It’s then that this “Lost Man” sees signs telling him the rules of the game, igniting his mission to get out of these tunnels.

I’m a big fan of horror movies with nightmare logic and liminal spaces. The Lost Man didn’t open an ominous door or enter a strange tunnel to get into this subway tunnel, with it feeling as though the world itself had glitched and sent him to some alternate dimension. Kawamura makes the location feel both mundane and unsettling all at once, which is a key component of the game. The movie borrows some of the anomalies from the game, whether it be a doorknob being in a different place or signs on the wall looking different. Even though these aren’t inherently terrifying anomalies, the premise that the movie sets up – causing both the characters and the viewer to search for these anomalies – gives a much more sinister vibe to even the slightest shift from reality.

Ninomiya keeps us engaged throughout the runtime, which is largely thanks to how little is required of him. He gets scared, confused, and frustrated every time he rounds a corner, as he conveys these emotions without overselling them. Yamato Kochi plays the “Walking Man,” stuck on an endless path through this subway tunnel in perpetuity. Kochi has even less to do than Ninomiya, but does have key moments where he gets to show off some unnerving physicality to signal an anomaly.

It’s difficult to overstate the simplicity of the original Exit 8 game. Even with a 90-minute runtime, the filmmakers needed to give you some backstory to try to get you to engage with the movie. As the Lost Man loses touch with reality in these subway tunnels, he has visions of his life with his ex-girlfriend and unborn child. With his ex-girlfriend explaining on the phone that she knows our protagonist wasn’t interested in children, the Lost Man’s journey in Exit 8 sees him questioning his choices and what he really wanted out of his future. In an attempt to give the minimalist game any emotional weight, the underlying message is about how much we overlook in our daily lives just to keep the monotony going in perpetuity. The Lost Man, and many others, take the same subway car to the same boring job over and over again. Exit 8 forces the Lost Man, and others, to pay more attention and engage with the world around them, and, whether you chase that change or run from it, sometimes it only takes one key difference to send your life on a new trajectory.

It might be a bit of a stretch to say that Exit 8 is offering up commentary on capitalism and the existential dread of feeling stuck in an endless loop toward the grave, but those seeds are assuredly planted to at least give the movie some semblance of a purpose. The filmmakers found just the right balance of injecting heavier themes into a straightforward premise to cause intrigue in the audience without fully diverting from the source material. Still, this is a movie about a guy walking through the same subway tunnel endlessly for 90 minutes. Sometimes creepy things happen, sometimes less nefarious anomalies emerge, and then the movie ends. I’ve never played the game (because I’m not a nerd), yet I feel like being the one in control of the main character on a quest to spot these anomalies would be a more anxiety-inducing experience, but the fact that Exit 8 manages to keep your attention in such a redundant narrative still feels like an accomplishment.

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