For a film whose source material lacks a narrative, it’s quite remarkable how the Exit 8 movie managed to weave a compelling story about responsibility and fatherhood against the game’s looping hallways and themes of dread and uncertainty. In a Game Informer interview, film director Genki Kawamura recently discussed how, through the advice of Nintendo game designer, producer, and director Shigeru Miyamoto, he was able to create what he thinks is a new way to adapt video games to film.
Kawamura points to a talk he had with Miyamoto ten years prior, where the latter described a really great game as “not only fun for the players, but also the people viewing the player playing the game.” Using Miyamoto’s words as a guide, Kawamura directed the Exit 8 film in such a way that audience would feel like it was switching between watching from the perspective of the protagonist, The Lost Man (played by Kazunari Ninomiya) and as a third, uninvolved party, as if watching a livestream.
Kawamura likens the switching of perspectives in Exit 8 to the current video game industry, where players (more specifically, streamers) experience games differently from those watching their playthroughs. As he didn’t want to just make a direct adaptation of Kotake Create’s game, it was very important for him to blur the lines between the video game and film mediums.
As for the movie’s story, the director also mentions that he referenced Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu, both of which explore themes of falling apart and fatherhood. Kawamura thinks that this approach helped Exit 8 get showcased at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, reportedly becoming the first video game adaptation to be screened at the event.
Related: The Exit 8 creator announces new third-person horror game Pale Dots
