Isn't Exit 8 Supposed to be Good? Spoilers

When a friend of mine excitedly told me about Exit 8, I was hooked. A never-ending subway hallway filled with perilous tests? Narrative about daddy issues? Based on a video game? Okay, yeah, now we're talking. The trailer hinted at a bittersweet, underlying intergenerational trauma narrative manifested through horror, which fully sold me. I was ready for some Hereditary styled story-telling, mixed with the a tinge of The Last of Us, or something of the likes.

Something remotely exciting, at the very least.

Instead, I ended up in theatres witnessing the most perfect, lacklustre movie I'd ever seen in my entire life.

The irony is that I actually had an exit but chose not to leave. I kept glancing over to the theatre door as though I was playing the main Squid Games game– you know, the one where you can't get caught moving by the gigantic doll. Except, the reason I kept staying is because the movie would present this unbelievably beautiful shot, promising the story would get better. But, the moment that I'd settle back into my seat, the movie would fail me with an equally soulless trope or storyline.

My point is, my heart felt nothing.

Very briefly, Exit 8 is a movie about a man who gets trapped in a subway station. After getting a call from his ex-girlfriend who tells him she's pregnant with his child, the man loses cell connection and ends up in a hallway that infinitely loops back to the same spot. In order to get out, the man must pass a series of tests and survive what's waiting for him in the shadows.

Sounds pretty cool, right? Well... just you wait.

For a story to elicit emotion in its viewers, it has to really establish its characters and their relationships with one another. Exit 8 had more than ample time during the main character's walking the hallway shots to establish what kind of character he was and what he was feeling. However, other than the first scene where he talks to his ex and we learn that she's pregnant, and that our main character is asthmatic, we get little to no more information about him unless it's explicitly shown through a flashback, or through expositional dialogue.

Which led me to question why there was such a lack in character development, especially for a movie that felt so slow at times. I realized the main reason was because there were too many themes. The movie wanted to target the mindlessness and repetition of life, evident through the endless subway maze that he gets stuck in. At the same time, the maze presumably also represents the disruption of an unplanned pregnancy, unwanted fatherhood, and intergenerational trauma. None of these themes really intertwine with one another, and so viewers are splattered with a bunch of symbols (admittedly, gorgeous on-screen) that don't connect well and end up feeling rather meaningless to the larger plot.

Let me deconstruct this a bit:

*SPOILER HEAVY*

The Father

One way that this movie could be read is as an encapsulation of intergenerational trauma. If the maze is an endless cycle between past, present, and future, then every decision or error that the main character sees in the hallway should, in effect, be one that he has already and will make– choosing to do something differently (or to notice a different mistake), as the present him, would determine whether his future alters or stays the same.

For instance, as we later find out, the Walking Man is a character who also gets trapped in the subway halls, learns how to pass the levels and just before he can reach freedom, abandons the random, wandering child in the subway, and then becomes stuck in a state of limbo. That is such a beautiful image of someone so close to breaking the cycle ultimately becoming devoured by their trauma, who willingly refuses to change and then unintentionally destroys the next generation.

The problem is, we get a whole entire chapter dedicated to this Walking Man, and then nothing to connect him to our main hero. If the walking man was the estranged father our protagonist never met, then his storyline would make some more sense. Instead, his whole plot remains entirely separate from the main characters, and ultimately ends up being meaningless to the rest of the storyline.

I argue that there needed to be more interactions between the Walking Man and our protagonist, and no interaction with the child. If this is an intergenerational story, then every character needs to link back to the main storyline. So, maybe having some kind of choice that the Walking Man makes that dictates the future of our protagonist, and then a revelation that links back to the protagonist's own internal dilemma about becoming a father would solidify how and why the main character struggles with the idea of becoming a father. Instead of just mindlessly wandering around the subway and being freaked out by the Walking Man, something about the punishments that he endured needed to link the two together, something that made both or at least one of them complicit. Without any link, the narrative becomes superficial. As I was watching it, I was like, why do we care about the Walking Man? What did his story give us?

Nothing. His story added literally nothing to the plot.

The Lost Kid

You can't just keep throwing random symbols and hope something clicks, but that is exactly what this movie did. After the Walking Man, who had nothing to do with anything, we were suddenly introduced to The Lost Kid.

At first, I thought, finally, something interesting is happening! The story is coming together! I got excited for a brief fifteen minutes, pondering whether the Walking Man was the dad who abandoned the main character and The Lost Child was the unborn kid; or, maybe the main character was all three characters, past, future, and present, and that this was a time loop of him re-experiencing his traumas. If that were the case, then the walk through the maze was him confronting his childhood self, and then his old, future self, as he repeated the same mistakes his father made. I thought the story would have the main character eventually realize the true error of his ways (not choosing the kid), and change his future. Would that not be the perfect intergenerational trauma movie?

Apparently, I expected too much of this movie.

The fact that the kid was going to be the main character's unborn child was a plot twist obvious from a million miles away (although I was really hoping I would be wrong and it would be the past version of our protagonist). Did it make sense? Not really. Was it effective? Nope.

Choosing this narrative route only made the rest of the plot even more confusing. We already don't know who the Walking Man is; suddenly there's this random evil lady who almost immediately disappears after her scene. Why was she there other than to make the Walking Man feel confused? No idea. She spazzes out and then it's like she never existed in the first place. Which lead me to the actual obstacles in the hallways. From the posters, to the doorways, to the lights flickering or rearranging, none of the things that the main character noted off about the hallway had anything directly to do with his inner turmoil (except, maybe the baby crying in the locker). The punishments for failing to notice a difference in the hallways, too, made zero sense because they didn't connect to any single theme. Everything became way too abstract, which took away from the effect the movie was going for.

And, yes, there was an emotional effect or impact that the movie so desperately wanted to hit but failed to. Most evident of that was the locker scene, or the flooding scene. In both cases, the movie suddenly brought back the whole thread about the main character's ex getting pregnant and him refusing to help the random mother on the bus. When the babies started crying, or the flood slammed against the main character, you could tell that the movie wanted to return to its main point– the relationship between a father and child, of choosing what you pass down to your kin.

However, if you never delve into that story, you force two characters who don't have anything to do with anything together for an entire chapter of the movie, and you never give the main character any space to really recognize or grapple with his main conflict, then the emotional impact falls null. Which is exactly what happens when we get the tear-inducing scene when the main character sacrifices himself for his son.

I'm not entirely heartless, okay? When the flood scene happened, I teared up. But it wasn't earned. The moment was a random– albeit, well performed and cinematographically stunning– scene that literally comes out of nowhere. The same way the ex-girlfriend appears only when the movie remembers what it's actually supposed to be about.

And what about the kid? Other than the fact that he is his unborn child, his presence feels unexplored. Even as he forges a relationship with the main character, everything feels superficial. One conversation, which is supposed to be the big reveal, is not enough to develop the internal conflict of choosing to become a parent, of recognizing how you're in charge of shaping your future. Nothing about the kid's presence changes the main character's perception about life or even the maze and how he chooses to problem-solve.

The Main Character

Asthma is not a character trait. This movie tries so hard to sell that it is. Supposedly, having the main character suffer from asthma is used in hopes of portraying the main character's existential anguish, but other than telling us that he isn't ready to be a father, and has no idea how to properly use an inhaler, the asthma becomes this convoluted plot point that very quickly disappears from the story entirely.

In all the walking, and asthmatic gasping, and random outbursts of emotion, the movie never allows the main character to be an active participant. Things happen to him. He goes through it. He comes out the other side. The asthma doesn't even manage to create a solid sense of tension– mostly irritation on my part when he refuses to shake the inhaler before using it! Like, yeah, obviously the asthma won't go away because you're not even inhaling the medication! Gawd.

To have a narrative that makes sense and feels real and understandable, there needs to be some character development, some tangible turning point that the movie builds up towards. The part this movie forgot about was "building up towards." We are introduced to a main character, told about a major conflict, and then after an asthma attack, one solid menty b, and a lot of wandering, we are told that the main character has gone through his journey and has grown. Except, what journey? The babies in the locker, the random rats with the pieces of the face, the flood all very distantly relate to the unborn kid, but it's never explained how. Neither are the various tests that he goes through. Even the main character never comes to any kind of revelation that would help audiences understand the story better. There's no pattern, or rhyme, or reason to anything.

That's what I mean by a splatter of symbols. For symbolism to work, it has to very obviously connect to the larger story. Intentionality is required. What became quickly evident in this movie was that imagery and symbols were being misused in hopes of covering up a large gap in the narrative. Which is to say, nothing was thought through. If the main storyline and the underlying themes are abstract, everything is going to feel too abstract and unintentional. You can have everything going for you, but if you slack off on the story, the whole thing falls apart. Exit 8 faced that exact issue. The maze plotline was super cool, the shots were incredible and the camerawork should honestly be awarded, but the story? The story felt like a flimsy reflection of something that could have been great.

I genuinely think that the writers got lost in the aesthetic of it all and forgot what the point was.

Which leads to fucking disappointment, in my opinion.

Apparently, the video game is much better. So do yourselves a favour and play that instead.