Movie Review: Exit 8

 

Michael's Movie Grade: D-

A boring and repetitive horror movie. 

Have you ever gotten bored watching someone else play a video game? That is the exact feeling that I had as I watched this movie. While I have not played the video game that this film is based on, I got the general gist of how it works by watching this movie. It seems like a fun video game that I could see myself enjoy playing. However, it made for a boring movie. The basic premise involves characters stuck in an endless looping corridor, the most find the anomaly to move on to the "next level," if they do not find the anomaly, they must start over from the beginning. They must reach the "8th level" to exit the corridor. While this is a very clever idea for a video game, for a movie it is simply too repetitive. For the majority of the runtime, you watch what is essentially the same thing over and over. While it is mildly interesting at first, it becomes boring very quickly. The film is only a little over an hour and a half but felt longer than some three-hour movies I have watched. 

The movie tries to add to this by adding some back story about one of the main characters dealing with learning his ex-girlfriend is pregnant. However, this back story is not very well developed, and we never feel any emotional investment. Attempts to make the surreal story a commentary on his moral dilemma and fatherhood in general falls flat because it never really says much of anything. 

The "scares" here are cheap and easy, relying on the most basic of jump scares or weird imagery. Not only is none of this scary, but none of it adds anything to the story or creates any reason for us to feel engaged. Making matters worse is that these "scares" (just like much of this movie) depend on the main characters acting incredibly stupid. 

This is a prime example of how not to make a film adaption of a video game.