I cannot remember the last time I played a computer game – and not even sure they are called that anymore. I do have a vague memory of a shooting game where you moved through a maze of brick walls and this is the closest game association I have with "Exit 8," the Japanese film adapted from the computer game of the same name.

It must be admitted that the Japanese have a very long and interesting relationship with the way we experience modern life. In the 80s, Japan was seen to be the home of innovation when it came to electronics and we always imagined it to be at the forefront of "technology." The meaning of the word "technology" has also changed in the intervening years, from referring to things that are designed to make life easier to things that we must use or face being left behind in every way. In that sense Japanese sense of modernity and technology remains almost a naive, benign one. And this is where the film "Exit 8" overturns this expectation on its head and makes a Japanese underground station some kind of a limbo which the characters cannot leave.

When we look at the setting of the underground it’s innocent enough. There are no fancy elevators, loudspeakers, electronic doors: just good old-tiled walls and ads (not even electronic ones!) with directions written on ordinary metal plates – except of course for the "Exit 8" sign which is a simple lit rectangle hanging from the ceiling. An underground station, that can, in other words, be found anywhere. And already the anxiety of the audience starts. Let’s face it, humans don’t like being underground and they seek the way out to the face of the earth as soon as they can. And who among us has not lost their way underground and panicked and took the nearest elevator to any exit that will get us out?

The film starts in a metro carriage where a commuter is listening to the beautiful sounds of the Maurice Ravel’s "Bolero" and then a baby starts crying. This is the first instance where the director Genki Kawamura is trying to wrongfoot us. Here is a man trying to reduce stress levels by listening to classical music, but the baby makes it impossible. Then another commuter, a "salaryman," starts shouting at the mother and for a second you think that’ll shut the baby up and then all the commuters can return to their own methods of coping with the morning rush. But the baby doesn’t stop, the mother doesn’t answer back but sits feeling ashamed – we are in Japan after all. We turn back to our commuter who increases the volume and gets off at the next stop.

There is no real indication if our protagonist, "the lost man" as the film names him, gets off at the stop he intended, or whether he has got off in order to avoid the social awkwardness of the situation, or to make it to the hospital where his ex-girlfriend has informed him she is at, trying to decide whether to have an abortion or not. This last bit of information is relayed to us in the most indirect Japanese way as possible, through evasion and focusing on just one word "decision." In any case when he gets off, he doesn’t look any more disoriented than the usual morning commuter and he proceeds toward the exit. And then his troubles begin.

Like many of us have done, he realizes that he has taken a wrong turn and has ended up in the same corridor. But unlike many of us, he finds himself in the loop of the same corridor over and over again. It is then that he reads a sign on the wall that tells him the rules of the "game." Proceed normally if nothing seems off, turn back immediately if you notice an anomaly. The word anomaly does a lot of heavy lifting in the film and for the philosphically minded it can mean a variety of things. Isn’t the way we live now an anomaly in itself? Humans commuting to work for hours underground?

In the context of the film/game, the protagonist decides a few elements that he/we should look out for when looking for the "anomaly." The ads on the wall on the left, the utility doors and fire hose cabinet on the right and when he turns the corner, a photobooth. The element that is most uncanny in the underground, however, is the "salaryman" – a Japanese word borrowed from the English to possibly emphasize the "anomaly" of men all dressing the same suit and going about their working day the same way. The "salaryman" keeps walking in the corridors in circles, like what I understand is called an NPC, a non player character in the game. Crucially, although he is there at rush hour, our protagonist is not dressed in a suit like a salaryman but is in casual clothes, and we never get to learn what he does for a living.

As in all good adaptations, the film gives a different perspective to this NPC and we get the story of how he became who he is, wondering the corridors of the metro. When we get to his "backstory" – only as back as him just freshly off his train – it is quite interesting to see him inhabit a human soul after having seen him walk almost in goosestep, with a deadsmile on his face, for the first half of the film. In this section we get introduced to what happened to the little boy our original protagonist sees (an anomaly! I hadn’t mentioned the boy before!) in his wonderings in the corridors. I had the sense that the story treated this ‘salaryman’ harshly – the act that causes his downfall, and turns him into a non player character, is, I fear, one many of us would have done.

The salaryman’s story, then, makes "the boy" the most important character, the philosopher’s stone of this quest. We are reminded that this is how the film started, a little baby being shouted at, a man being flaky about his pregnant partner... The most direct message the film is giving, then, is that the boy, the little person inside of us, is the most crucial thing of all. That when we are lost and trying to find our way, it is the child in ourselves that we need to trust.