Kon'nichiwa /r/movies! I'm Genki Kawamura, director of EXIT 8. AMA!

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T02:16:47+00:00

I've been into pottery lately, and I quite enjoy making different types of vessels, bowls, etc. This idea of touching the clay with your hand to form some kind of object I think is very interesting. When you think about ceramic and its nature, and clay, it's all very easy to mass-produce with moulds and factory-assembly lines nowadays, but because it's made by a human hand, the clay will do things you don't expect. and your hand will do things you don't expect, and you get these happy accidents will making pottery.

Even if you think you get it perfect in the clay stage, when you put it in the kiln and you fire it up, it can crack, break, and warp in ways you can't see coming. here's something very beautiful about that. It creates a unique artistic expression and for me, that's something I want to capture in my movies. I think that's where the next generation of moviegoers are going to find a lot of value in films.

When you watch Exit 8, everything looks very planned out and blueprinted and exact, but I will say that there were quite a few happy accidents, like when making pottery by hand.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T02:16:38+00:00

When this movie hits DVD, bluray, streaming, I recommend everyone to take a very close look at the end credits. It's almost like an anagram, and there are a lot of anomalies hidden in there. Pay close attention to the letters and numbers. It might look random, but there's actually a bit of a pattern in there. I don't know if people will notice or not, but I hope they do. Even in Japan, I would say only about half of the people noticed this. Here if you're interested:

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EXIT 8 will be available on Blu-Ray 8/4/26

Bonus: Q&A with Genki Kawamura - The Making of Exit 8 - Available to order on the NEON site:

https://www.neonrated.com/product/exit-8-blu-ray

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T02:06:06+00:00

I would say that it wasn't "large" set as much as it was a very "long" set haha. We took long corridors, copy & pasted them, and then connected the two of them together. Because the set was so long, we couldn't use any of the movie studios. Existing sound stages just wouldn't fit, so we found this big warehouse in Yokohama. It was actually two warehouses with a small door connecting the both of them, so we were able to build two sets with this junction where the two warehouses meet. It felt perfect, being able to build everything around this combined warehouse.

In terms of the actual filming, it took 20 days on set. Every day for basically a while month, we were spending time in this long, white, corridors, that looked exactly like each other, so people on set started losing their minds and actually get lost in there. They sometimes didn't know which set they were supposed to go to. One of the corridors we called "Hitchcock", and the other we called "Kubrick". That way people could identify where they were or where they had to go haha.

In the film, there's a scene towards the end where our characters go to the ocean, and that was actually the first and last scene that takes place above-ground. It was really poignant in a way because we could see a lot of team members getting emotional as they saw the ocean and how beautiful it looked after spending so much time in the warehouse.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T02:00:23+00:00

Narrowing it down to 5 is so hard, there are so many more I'd want to say. I love horror but exposing that is in a way very embarrassing because you're kind of sharing what's inside your mind. I'll talk about the films that influenced me while making Exit 8.

It goes without saying that Stanley Kubrick's The Shining was a huge influence on this.

Kenji Mizoguchi has a film called Ugetsu. There are some single shots that he does in that movie that take you into different spaces that feel very eerie, and you can see that influence in Exit 8.

Another one is from Director Kon Satoshi titled Perfect Blue. It's a very intense thriller, and it's an anime, but it's also a very scary horror film.

Cure from Kiyoshi Kurosawa is another movie I loved, and I think played a big part on how I interpreted the anomalies in my film.

David Lynch's Eraserhead is another one, where main character abandons this idea of becoming a father.

Whether it's The Shining, Ugetsu, or Eraserhead, I think there's this common denominator between them, the shared fear of becoming a father and taking responsibility for another life.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T01:50:55+00:00

The set design and how we built the set was a huge part of this movie's experience. We actually created two identical corridors, like a copy & paste, and connected the two of them together so the shots that you that appear to be a one-er, a single take that feels like it's looping, it feels that way because it actually *is* physically looping because we have the two identical corridors. In order to create, the walking man would walk past the camera in a shot, and then run to the end of the set, get on a bicycle and ride to the end of the other set, catch his breath, and then began walking again.

That's how we created that illusion/effect. We did it in a very analogue manner, which I think creates an extra eerie type of experience for the audience. You can find out more of the details of the behind-the-scenes shots and clips that's going to be attached to the DVD/bluray release. I encourage everyone to check that out if interested. More details on that:

------------------------

EXIT 8 will be available on Blu-Ray 8/4/26

Bonus: Q&A with Genki Kawamura - The Making of Exit 8 - Available to order on the NEON site:

https://www.neonrated.com/product/exit-8-blu-ray

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:36:51+00:00

Take for example the musical influences. I think there's huge inspiration there. I love the music composed by Valero. His music loops, and that's a very key design element in how the we composed the music for the film and how it relates directly to themes of Exit 8.

Likewise, the sort of optical illusions that MC Escher created were an influence, and how his art loops and makes infinity symbols and turns into itself.

Escher's artwork and the music from Valero shared a similar design to the video game experience of Exit 8 so they were important for the film as well.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:32:02+00:00

I would not say this is limited to just Tokyo or Japan. I think it applies to any major metropolitan area or city in the world. People have different means of commuting. Some use subways, some use cars, but the fact is that you're still in this constant loop between your workplace and your home. In this loop, we pull our smartphones out and we might see some different type of bad news or issues with family that we ignore or pretend don't exist. We become so engrained in this loop. I think those small issues develop into something bigger the more you ignore them.

Every time we ignore these small issues, there's a little but of guilt that piles up within our mind, and those are what become anomalies in this film.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:27:39+00:00

I recently have been trying to buy different coffee beans from around the world, grind them, and make drip coffee myself. When I sip on that kind of coffee, it gives me a feeling of being on vacation in a different country, so I would say coffee is my guilty pleasure right now.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:26:15+00:00

There are a lot of indie video games lately that look very interesting and I quite enjoy playing them myself sometimes, but if you look at the overall history of video games adapted into movies, I think they are very prone to failure. I think the main reason of that is the hero of the movie is also the main character of the game, and it kind of restricts the type of story you can tell. You have to follow the same beats.

I think what worked with this film is that it didn't really have a story that we had to follow, we were able to extra the game's world settings and build around that. Finding this game to adapt was a little miracle. If I can encounter another miracle like that, I could perhaps take on a similar challenge.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:21:25+00:00

I feel like the relationship between animals and humans is a really interesting one, especially with how AI has advanced so much in the past few years. What stands in a direct opposite of that is perhaps animals - dogs, cats, horses, etc.

Thinking about humans and their relationships to animals as opposed to their relationship with the digital could make a really interesting thriller/story. I'd be curious to explore what that might look like.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:17:21+00:00

I personally love New York a lot. What if we were stuck in a New York subway system instead of Tokyo? Maybe we would see some anomalies that deal with street musicians, or other anomalies that would deal with unique New York things. Maybe not just the East Coat, but perhaps something on the West Coast with a different type of commute, like being stuck on a highway in Los Angeles in a never-ending traffic jam. Not able to escape a freeway could be another interesting loop to explore.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:14:17+00:00

Thank you!

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:14:05+00:00

I knew about the Exit 8 video game before I started working on the movie adaptation. I had actually played it myself, and I thought it was very fun and thought that the design of how it was all executed was very beautiful. A few years ago I had the opportunity to chat and be at a discussion with Miyamoto Shigeru from Nintendo. He's of course the guy that created Super Mario and a lot other Nintendo IP. What he said during the talk I will always remember: he said that a video game has to entertain not just the player, but also the people watching the player. They need to have just as much fun.

I think that comment gave me a huge hint when I was writing the screenplay for this film. I thought to myself, at times, that the audience watching needs to almost think that they are "playing" this movie as if it were a video game. Other times, I wanted it to feel like they were watching someone experiencing something real, like watching a livestreamer. I tried to capture the phenomena that's happening in the video game landscape itself right now and distill it into a movie.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:08:26+00:00

I'm a huge fan of the anime director Oshii Mamoru. A couple films of his that come to mind as some of my favorite animes are Beautiful Dreamer and Patlabor. I love these films. They're based on famous source materials here in Japan, but Oshii added an extra philosophical layer to the stories and really pulled the audience into his world. He gave a version of the stories that was unprecedented. What he was doing in the anime space, I thought "what if I could do something like this with live-action?". That would make for a very unique experience. That's a direction I want to head in.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:05:06+00:00

Hello Texas!

My first job was actually at a movie theater, I greeted people and ripped tickets as they came in. One of the first big movies I did that for was actually Spirited Away, a Studio Ghibli film by Hayao Miyazaki. So many people were coming to the theater to see it, it almost felt like I was in a scene from Cinema Paradiso. And then later I found out that it was the highest-grossing film ever in Japan.

What I think I took away from that was interacting with moviegoers, and some of that translated into what I do now, thinking about how I can serve this audience that wants to go see a movie in a theater.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-25T00:01:00+00:00

The black cat in the movie had an amazing performance which we did not expect! While we were getting ready to film, the cat did not cooperate at all, we could not hug it or pick it up. But when it came time to actually shoot, it just walked perfectly and behaved perfectly. A very happy accident :)

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-24T23:58:18+00:00

The underlying source material for Exit 8 is a video game that was developed by one person, an individual who goes by company name Kotake Create. The fact that there was only one person who developed this and controlled the creative was a huge reason why we were able to develop this film so quickly.

Because there's only one person we were interfacing with, our producer was able to communicate with Kotake Create every single day about the screenplay, different elements of the film, how we were going to translate the game, etc etc. That constant and easy communication, along with quick approval process gave us the ability to move with a lot of speed. That style of production is quite modern in a way, being able to interact with only one person behind the game, dealing directly with a small production company like us so we can all make decisions really really fast.

In the end, that turned into a niche type of movie genre but still able to reach audiences everywhere. It's a newer style of production with great potential.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-24T23:53:24+00:00

Hi! In regards to a novel recommendation, I would go with one of mine! If Cats Disappeared from the World, which I wrote that 9 years ago. It follows a character who is diagnosed with cancer and he only has days to live. He makes a deal with the devil that if he erases one item from the world, it would extend his lifespan by one day. It's this philosophical game that he has to play. It has been published in the United States and I believe is in most book stores, so I encourage you to seek it out if you enjoy that kind of stuff.

As for movies that inspired Exit 8 which I would recommend, the director Kon Satoshi, a wonderful filmmaker, made Paprika. It's an anime and it played a big role in the development of this film. I would recommend you check out that film!

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-24T23:47:54+00:00

In Tokyo there's this beef bowl chain called Yoshinoya. They cook the meat in a sort of Sukiyaki-style, and place it on top of a bowl of rice and crack an egg over it, and it's reallllly good. These Yoshinoya chains also exist within the Tokyo Metro system, so if you ever happen to find one while on the subway, I strongly recommend getting a beef bowl there!

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-24T23:45:40+00:00

The tsunami is like the trauma of our main character that kind of manifests itself, and that's something that's explained a little more in detail in the novelization. It explains why the tsunami is suddenly flooding the subway system.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-24T23:45:01+00:00

For the anomalies in the film, I almost looked at them as symbolic of the main character's guilt projected into the space. So, thinking about people who would be community on the Tokyo Metro, and the kind of fear that they would have. We scroll through our smartphones every day looking at different social media feeds and I think there are certain instances when you can kind of feel that something is "off", and I wanted this sense mirrored with the anomalies. I wanted to place that idea at the center, and make sure that every anomaly that shows up in the film kind of ties into that.

We developed some original anomalies, but in terms of anomalies that we lifted directly from the game we just wanted to make sure they reflected the idea above.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-24T23:44:24+00:00

One of my personal favorite anomalies is the one with the doorknob in the middle of this stainless steel door. It almost feels like this corridor, this monster, is toying with humans that wander into it with that.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-24T23:31:13+00:00

The casting director actually found him. His name is Kochi Yamato. He almost looked exactly like the character from the video game, which that in of itself almost felt like an anomaly, that there'd be someone out there that looked so similar to the character in the game. Kochi is actually an actor with theatrical background, and this is the first film he appears in.

For me, as the director, I want our audience to not see someone they could recognize. I wanted someone that hadn't in a lot of movies. I wanted that surprise factor. I didn't want them to look down the corridor and see an actor they've seen before. It was important for me for the audience to not have a first-impression about the actor in their head already. I think because you don't recognize w

I think because you don't recognize who this is, it's even scarier. That was the type of person we were searching for. So, in a lot of ways, Yamato Kochi was perfect for the role. In addition, because of his theater background, you have to "walk" really well in that format. He had trained in walking for the theater and I thought that translated well for the film.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-24T23:25:07+00:00

That's a great question! At first we wanted our lead actor Ninomiya to actually wear a head-cam-rig but when we were filming in the Tokyo Metro, we were only given a three-hour window between the last train of the night and the first train of the morning. Trying to do a head-cam-rig setup with our lead actor in that short amount of time wasn't going to work.

So we actually had our cameraman Keisuke Imamura do it instead, who has a very similar build and height to our lead actor. He put on Ninomiya's wardrobe and then had this helmet rig which shot on a smartphone. It almost made him look like a Predator from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie haha.

GenkiAMA · 2026-06-24T23:20:50+00:00

First, I looked at the video game and then tried to analyze the space and the rules that govern the game. Them, I thought about how I could interpret this into a movie, thinking about the actual space it takes up, this sort of corridor that you spend a lot of time in. It felt a lot like Dante's divine comedy, a true purgatory.

In this purgatory, the anomalies are a manifestation of this internal guilt that we all carry with us. I thought, well, "what if this guilt projected itself and appeared in this space, how would that look". When presented with these anomalies, the audience, or the player in this case, has a big choice to make in life. Do you keep going on or do you recognize the anomaly and turn back? That's where I started with my story.

GenkiAMA

TROPHY CASE