Exit Horror Movie
Ronald Frison
So, while I kept waiting for a twist that never came, the many twists that did come along, did not work for me. At all really. It almost felt like the further along the plot went, the more we moved in the opposite direction of all the things that were working.
Damien Power is the director of No Exit and his feature film debut was a movie we really enjoyed. It was the brilliant (and creepy as hell) horror-thriller Killing Ground (2016). That also means that No Exit is just his second feature film, while he has done quite a lot of short films.
A college student, on her way home from visiting her mother, gets stuck with a group of people at a mountain rest stop during a blizzard. Things take a turn for the worse when the young woman discovers a kidnapped child in a car belonging to one of the people inside, putting the group in a terrifying life-or-death situation as they struggle to escape while trying to discover who among them is the kidnapper.
Since completing that first game, I have made a point of picking up each one they bring out and have with the exception of the last 2 Exit games, and at this point in time I now only have one in my collection to muddle my way through.
However back to The Catacombs of Horror (TCoH) review, I was given a copy by Komos at the UKGE and I have only got around to playing it now because I wanted to save it for the right time and with the right people. Unfortunately, My loving wife has played a couple of games and not really enjoy them as much as I do. So, I have to wait for the right opportunity to arise. On a trip to visit my friends Sarah and Nick, and knowing they like a good EXIT game, this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
TCoH is different in some ways the others as it is a bigger box and is a 2 part story ( It says it right on the box), It also has a 4.5 out of 5 expert rating printed again on the box, this has to be the highest difficulty exit game. After completing this box I am wondering if this rating was a mistake and it should have been a 5.
Brandon Waites served in the U.S. Air Force and had the opportunity to deploy Iraq and Pakistan. After his service, he earned his bachelor's degree in Business and earned his MA in Film & Television with a concentration in producing. He interned under Benderspink for Hollywood producers Chris Bender and J.C. Spink. After his intership, Brandon co-founded multiple companies for networking and contests for screenwriters and filmmakers. His love for horror drove him to begin HorrOrigins as a film festival in 2019. In response to the positive response of HorrOrigins, Brandon decided to expand HorrOrigins into multiple ventures to benefit the independent horror screenwriters and filmmakers.
But once in a while, something deeply unnerving happens. Early on, I rounded the corner to see the man walking towards me far faster than any human should; I got the hell out of there. Later, I noticed the eyes on a poster were moving. Another time, I was studying the posters when I had the vague sense something was wrong; I looked up and saw the fluorescent lights were all askew:
And then there are the rare jump scares. These happen just often enough to keep you on edge every time you turn the corner. Once, I was most of the way down the corridor when I heard a noise, like a loud fan. I turned to look at the vent in the wall, which seemed normal, then looked back to see a wave of red water surging down the corridor. I walked, then ran backwards as fast as I could.
Thank you for using the underground passageway. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you, There are 26 of anomalies that have not been found. We appreciate your understand and cooperation.
The Exit 8 is a spot the difference horror game set in a Japanese subway corridor. Sometimes the corridor looks like a normal subway corridor, and sometimes it contains \u201Canomalies\u201D like a missing door or different floor tiles or a monster that leaps out at you. To exit the subway, you need to spot if there are any anomalies, eight times in a row.
Now, liminal spaces and backrooms may be hot with the kids, but setting a game in them doesn\u2019t automatically make it good or scary. What\u2019s special about The Exit 8 is how it achieves maximum tension through unbelievably streamlined design.
This is in effect from the very first second. When you start the game, there are no company logos, no \u201CPowered by Unreal\u201D badge, no menu to change controls or view credits; you start the game and you\u2019re immediately standing in a subway corridor. It\u2019s deeply disconcerting, like when you take a step and the ground isn\u2019t where you were expecting. It\u2019s such a small thing to do and not really advisable for most games, but it sets the tone perfectly.
The corridor has white tiles lit by harsh fluorescent strips in the ceiling. A man walks past you, carrying a briefcase. There are posters on one side, advertising a dog salon and a photo exhibition; opposite them are locked doors. A hum emanates through the space, with a quiet clicking sound that comes so infrequently it\u2019s always a mild shock when you hear it. It\u2019s rendered with near-photorealistic fidelity, which intensifies both the monotony and the terror.
Not only does The Exit 8 have the coldest of opens, but it has zero story and makes zero effort to explain itself. Here\u2019s what happened in my first few minutes: I walked down the corridor, following it left, right, then left again, and arrived at exactly the same corridor with the same man rounding the corner. Turning around just took me to the same corridor, as if space were warping around me. This time I followed the man, keeping him in my sight; he stopped at an exit sign to look at his phone; when I walked round a corner and back again, he vanished.
In practice, this means you enter the main corridor and see if anything looks different. If there\u2019s nothing different, you go to the end and keep walking. If there is something different, like there are two men standing in the corridor instead of one, or there\u2019s a stain on the ceiling, you turn back the way you came. If you\u2019re correct that there was nothing, or there was something, the number on the yellow exit sign increases from Exit 0 to Exit 1. But if you\u2019re wrong and you missed a difference, it resets to Exit 0. That\u2019s it!
I\u2019ve deliberately underplayed the scariness of some of the \u201Canomalies\u201D because The Exit 8 is, for the most part, not filled with jump scares. Most of the differences in the corridor are subtle and easily missed, like this stain on the ceiling:
Then there\u2019s the time I died. I spotted the anomaly immediately as I turned into the corridor: there was the outline of a man on the far wall. I could\u2019ve left right then, like a sensible person, but instead I decided to get closer to see what it was. When I was just a few metres away, the man, who was covered in wall tiles, sprung out and throttled me; the screen went black and I woke up right at the start. So when I later encountered an anomaly where the lights flickered off and I only had a small torch to see with, I could only imagine what terrors might be in store for me.
Recounting these anomalies is like telling scary stories around a fire: \u201Cthis one time\u2026\u201D What\u2019s impressive about The Exit 8 is how efficiently it delivers those stories. Other games, burdened with dialogue and story and world-building, space out those stories across minutes and hours, but in this subway, every time you turn the corner you\u2019re setting yourself up for a scare. It might not happen \u2013 sometimes you can go around a few times without seeing anything weird \u2013 but that only heightens anticipation and forces you to pay more attention.
It only took me 30 minutes to decide correctly eight times in a row and reach Exit 8. When this happens, the corridor is swapped out with stairs and you\u2019re greeted with sounds of the city and nature; the screen goes white and we roll credits. Then you\u2019re back in the corridor again, except there\u2019s a new sign:
The number ticks down as you keeping playing and spotting more differences. It\u2019s nicely subtle scorekeeping that reassures you there\u2019s more to see over the next couple of hours. Even better, anomalies aren\u2019t repeated, so there\u2019s little wasted time.
The designers\u2019 restraint is impressive \u2013 another game might have been all jump scares, but it\u2019s the wonky ceiling lights that will stick with me for their economy of terror. It\u2019s trivial for designers to speed up a walking animation or change the image on a poster or move around lights in a scene, but if executed well, the effect it has on players is profound \u2013 who would do such a thing?!
Lately, critics have become jaded to graphical fidelity, correctly seeing it as a replacement for good gameplay, but The Exit 8\u2019s photorealism is essential to its success, as the architecture and surfaces and lighting are so close to reality that any departure from its perfect cleanliness and straight lines seems even scarier. As a side note, I was astonished how good this looked on my Steam Deck OLED, though it did chew through the battery at a ferocious pace.
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