Last night at SIFF Cinema Uptown, I watched Exit 8, and it’s one of those films that quietly gets under your skin and stays there. The premise feels deceptively simple, a man trapped in an underground corridor, searching for an exit that may or may not exist. But what unfolds is something far more unsettling. The film plays with repetition, with subtle shifts in reality, with the kind of details you almost miss until you don’t.
Directed by Genki Kawamura, Exit 8 leans into restraint. There’s very little excess here, just atmosphere, tension, and the growing sense that something is deeply wrong. It turns observation into survival, forcing both the character and the audience to question what they’re seeing. Watching it at SIFF made it even more immersive. The silence in the theater felt intentional, like everyone was scanning the screen together, looking for the same anomalies, trying to find a way out. It’s not loud. It doesn’t rely on shock. It builds something quieter, more psychological, and honestly, more unsettling because of it.
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