NEON’s First Video Game Movie Comes Out Swinging With New Trailer

6 days ago 4

Kazunari Ninomiya looks terrified at something off camera in 'Exit 8' image

Published Feb 5, 2026, 11:06 AM EST

Britta DeVore is a Senior Author for Collider who has been known to dabble with Reality News as well.

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When she isn't sitting behind her laptop bringing readers her hot takes on upcoming projects or keeping the dream alive in the Senior News team, Britta can usually be found outside hiking or inside behind her drum set. She currently plays in two bands, Kid Midnight and Watergate, both based in Brooklyn. An obsessive traveler, Britta loves long road trips to the South West and has a soft spot in her heart for canyons, rivers, and forests.

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With the start of another year, NEON is coming in hot. Today, the debut trailer for the studio’s upcoming twisted and thrilling horror flick Exit 8 has officially arrived, and it looks as bonkers as everyone was hoping it would be. Based on Kotake Create’s uber-popular video game of the same name, the film promises to chew audiences up and spit them out after embarking on a psychological thrill ride alongside its leading character. After blowing attendees away at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it debuted as a Midnight Selection, the title has already celebrated a solid run in Japan, where it earned the equivalent of $33 million. Now, it’s time for U.S. audiences to feast their eyes on the madness crafted by filmmaker Genki Kawamura from a screenplay he penned alongside Kentaro Hirase when the project arrives sometime in the near future.

The beginning moments of Exit 8 are an absolute vibe for anyone who lives in a city where subway systems and bus lines are the main forms of transportation. It’s here, on his daily commute, that we meet Kazunari Ninomiya’s (Last Samurai Standing) character known only as The Lost Man. His daily monotony soon turns into pure nightmare fuel after he finds himself stuck in the train station, continuously walking down the hallway of Exit 8. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to find a way out of his surroundings, and the faces that walk by him refuse to respond to his queries. Eventually, he stumbles upon the rules for his escape, which thrust him into a mind-boggling puzzle that he has no choice but to solve before it’s too late. Every second is precious as he relies on his memory to spot anomalies in his surroundings and play by the rules, with survival becoming more bleak by the minute.

At Cannes, director Kawamura told Collider's Steve Weintraub how they were able to translate the gaming experience into a cinematic format using oners.

"As you know, this is based on the indie video game, and it’s a film, but I wanted to start with an almost game-like experience. It’s an adaptation of a game, but we wanted the line between game and film to be blurred in this case. It was almost an experiment of what would happen if we were to “gamify” our day-to-day lives. So, we start with the subjective cinematography and the corridor loops, and you see the yellow exit sign. You probably noticed that we insert a close-up of the exit sign many times, and that’s because I think it’s kind of a divine entity that's ruling the whole corridor for me. That godlike entity is watching human beings and the behaviors, kind of like Hal from [2001] A Space Odyssey. Once that happens, you notice that the camera moves to an objective third-person photography."

A small but mighty cast, the call sheet behind Exit 8 also includes Yamato Kochi (Hitman from Today), Nana Komatsu (The World of Kanako), Naru Asanuma (The Night After the Divorce), and Kotone Hanase (A Far Shore). Yuto Sakata, Kenji Yamada, Akita Yamamoto, and Taichi Ito serve as producers.

What Else Does NEON Have on the Way?

NEON had yet another stellar year in 2025 with the arrival of celebrated films, including Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, Oz Perkins’ The Monkey, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, and Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks. The studio is now prepping for the impending release of a handful of other sure-fire projects, like Matt Johnson’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, Óliver Laxe’s Sirāt, and Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers.