Revenge of Graphic Content #15: Exit 8 is the Better Backrooms

I fully admit that the title of this installment of Revenge of Graphic Content is partial engagement bait. While I do feel Exit 8 is the better liminal space movie, I do not mean to imply Backrooms is terrible. So let me just lay that out front.

For fans of liminal space horror, both films are a treat, and there is a lot to love about both of them. While Exit 8 is a 2025 film, its recent US release on Shudder is timely and definitely puts the movie in an intentional conversation with Kane Parson’s film – for better and worse.

Liminal Horror and Trauma

This year’s Backrooms is a strange case of a public domain work finding a theatrical adaptation that primarily involves a creator’s specific interpretation of the work. It’s a weird situation, and there are all kinds of questions of who owns what and what constitutes open culture here, but that is a discussion for another time – a big discussion at that. Can we trust A24 with inherent internet culture?

In the case of Exit 8, the film is a little more straightforward in the sense that it is an adaptation of a video game. Both films take narrativeless concepts and build narratives into the framework.

In the case of Backrooms, it falls into the trap¹ that I see in a lot of horror films: the exploration of trauma. Trauma and horror go together frequently because they absolutely work in tandem. Trauma is a form of haunting, and early horror was most often referred to as “ghost stories” back in the 19th century. Mary Shelley and Lord Byron weren’t writing horror stories that night Frankenstein was conceived; they were challenging one another to ghost stories.

Traumatize This

Since about the 2010s, the processing of trauma or commentary on dealing with trauma has been a pretty reliable go-to for many horror films, to the point where it has become a bit of a meme. Case in point, tell me if you’ve heard this one:

As I see it, trauma in horror seems to split into two branches: generational trauma, or coming to terms with a traumatic event. In the case of the former, a character may be haunted by something in the family or social circle over a long period of time or between generations of the family. In the case of the latter, maybe there is something that happened to the individual in the past that has traumatized them to the point where the horror story serves as a vehicle to overcome the trauma or learn to live with it.

I could name several: It Follows, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Shining, Doctor Sleep, Hereditary, and probably a dozen more. Any of my horror homies would be able to see each title listed there and draw a link to one form of trauma-baiting or the other. This is not a bad thing. It keeps happening because it works. But it has become so common I can’t help but find it a bit boring or even easy.

I made a goddamn SpongeBob meme out of it.

Backrooms, for example, has the distinction of using liminal space horror to feature both forms of trauma.

Trauma in the Backrooms

Our two leads in Backrooms are Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve); they each represent a different trauma branch. Obviously, as revealed in Backrooms, Mary’s mother was a shut-in who locked her daughter in a rapidly degenerating home – the parent inflicting trauma upon the child. Generational. Mary does all she can to escape it, but still holds onto it as it was formative to who she is, such as in keeping a chunk of the driveway associated with a childhood memory. Her desire to help as a therapist, albeit an ineffective one, is a metaphor for her failure to cope with generational trauma.

Clark has been traumatized by his inability to cope with his choices, and rather than come to terms with them (with his terrible therapist, who has her own problems to figure out), he chooses to dwell. He chooses the discomfort and the frustration because it makes him feel whole. Is he miserable? Absolutely, but Clark is a man who thrives on misery because it diminishes his perception of his agency in his own trauma. He’s a never-been architect, he was a shitty partner, and he doesn’t have good business sense. He made the traumatic choice of putting his life on hold for his wife (if we believe his unreliable recounting of his past) and never achieved what he wanted. It’s easier to blame her and any number of things than to come to terms with his agency.

And the Backrooms is a better film for using these traumas the way it does. These ideas make a lot of sense with how Kane Parsons developed his take on the concept. He made an ever-expanding murder house mind palace that takes trauma from everyone and manifests it as an ever-growing physical space. It is a cool idea, and it works. Loved it. But Exit 8 is a liminal space horror film that does not dwell on trauma and was more novel to me. It also led me to some interesting questions. With Backrooms, once you get it, there aren’t any significant, lingering questions. Mary’s simulacrum at the film’s final shot locks everything in place and there’s not much left to question.

Horror About Choice

Exit 8, directed by Genki Kawamura, follows a man known as “the Lost Man” (Kazunari Ninomiya) as he finds himself in a continually looping subway terminal filled with frightening anomalies. The film has a very video game-like structure, which reflects its nature as an adaptation of a video game of the same name. Much like how Kane Parsons took a concept that is generally narrativeless, Kawamura and Kentaro Hirase filled in the gaps, using the iconic elements of the existing project and weaving them into a story.

But rather than leaning into trauma as the driving force of the narrative, Exit 8 becomes a story about choice, reflected in the repetitive choices made in the film: move forward or retreat. Ninomiya’s “Lost Man” is a cog in the wheel that is Japanese work society – his head down, repeating the daily commute, working at a temp job. He avoids conflict, and you get a sense he avoids living; his constant companion of an inhaler presents a physical limitation as a metaphor for a lack of adventurousness here. “The Lost Man” refuses to defend a young mother on a train being berated by an angry salaryman over her crying infant. He simply turns his attention away and allows it to happen.

He is suddenly called by an ex who tells him that she is pregnant and asks him what he wants to do. It’s an immediate choice and also carries metaphorical weight: to move forward would be to support the child, but to put his head down would be to abort. Herein lies his choice and the film’s horror pushes him to come to a decision and not simply move through life with his head down.

Yeah, Sure, This is Traumatic

The discovery that he might need to be a father can be read as traumatic, yes. I am not going to let you “gotcha” me here. I believe that, as it is a concurrent, active event, we can shove the trauma thing aside. Trauma is usually associated with the past, is it not? Future trauma is not the metric we are operating by in this case².

Time-Wimey Terminal Terror

The film has a very limited cast with three main roles. One role is the character of “the Walking Man,” who is a rather iconic part of the video game. The man is often tied to anomalies on different loops and is equally tragic and unnerving. The film adaptation does some fascinating things with him that build on these characteristics, but also lead me to an interesting question. But first, let me preface this with an explanation of this terminal space.

The train terminal as presented in the film is like a Möbius loop. it could be a test, or it could be purgatory. There are all sorts of theories about it’s nature (8 is a key number in reincarnation lore). But we do learn a particularly key thing about it through the addition of “the Boy” in that the terminal is a space of non-linear time. We learn that “the Boy” is actually the son of “the Lost Man.”

But therein lies the problem: is it fated that he chooses to become a father, or is this a possible future? I don’t think presenting a choice with a fated outcome manifesting itself in the space makes a ton of sense. It tips the scales towards one choice too heavily for the character and reduces their agency and the threat.

But if we consider that the film’s horror is predicated on the nature of choice, and “the Boy” represents one option, then perhaps “the Walking Man” carries a greater significance.

The Walking Man Might be the Lost Man

“The Walking Man” is a metaphor for the impulse of “the Lost Man” to bury his head in the sand and stay on the path he is on. That much is obvious as you put things together in the film. But I think he serves as more than a metaphor here – he represents a future version of “the Lost Man” had he not chosen to be a father.

During the failure loop, we see with “the Walking Man” that he mentions at a low point that he was meant to meet his son for the first time. Similarly, “the Lost Man” meets his son for the first time in this liminal space. It feels too direct to serve as a metaphor alone. Conceivably, “the Walking Man” is the path where the baby is kept, but “the Lost Man” has nothing to do with it. I believe a case can be made for this under these circumstances alone.

But there are also other weird coincidences where anomalies in the terminal closely echo elements of “the Lost Man’s” story.

The Babies and the Women

The sound of crying babies is heard in three significant spots in the film. First is on the train, where “the Lost Man” refuses to defend the berated young mother (I am counting all instances of this moment later in the film as well). The second is in the lockers, where the concept evokes the coin-locker babies, which was a very real sociological issue in 70s and 80s Japan. And then, finally, in the sequence with the rats with the lab-grown human parts (it’s a weird sequence to try to explain).

It is a small thing, but the anomalous “High School Girl” of “the Walking Man’s” segment has some similarities to the berated mother in as much as I could make out regarding their hair and apparent ages. It’s not inconceivable to me that the “High School Girl’s” presence in “the Walking Man’s” loops may be that berated mother calling out his guilt of not standing up for her, which is something that drives “the Lost Man’s” anxieties during his loop.

The fact that “the Walking Man” essentially takes the “High School Girl’s” place as an anomalous figure for the next person trying to escape this purgatory may also present a tie-in with the locker babies. That mother had to make a choice herself, and if she was a young mother, well… perhaps those lockers might have been a potential solution she might have considered. But the presence of the baby on the train suggests it was the choice she did not make.

As for the rats, well… cloning needs stem cells, and embryos are a good source for that kind of thing. I fully admit I am still trying to piece this element in with my understanding of the film as a whole. I have only seen the movie once, and wrote this the day after. Just let me cook for a while.

Lingering Questions

Walking out of Backrooms, I felt “whelmed” and didn’t feel like I had too many lingering questions beyond “what is next?” I think the bigger questions revolving around Backrooms for me right now are more about how this can change the conversation in the public domain and how to adapt internet culture that is inherently open and ownerless. But for the story presented, it was fairly blunt and didn’t inspire a ton of interrogation beyond what fans have already been doing with the Backrooms as a concept over the past decade. The truth is, I saw Masters of the Universe after my Backrooms screening, and Masters of the Universe stuck with me more, for what that is worth.

Exit 8 struck me as a better film I could really dig into. Once the credits began rolling, I jumped into my notes app to start outlining some of the points I brought up in this post. I feel more compelled to untangle it compared to one of the biggest films of the year. I think that says a lot.

Exit 8 is currently streaming on Shudder. Backrooms is currently available as VOD.

In any case, thanks for reading this installment of Revenge of Graphic Content. Please share your thoughts on this post in the comments below. If you want to support my writing, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi.

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1. Trap here is just a turn of phrase; in this case, I am more commenting on it being a simple solution to create a sense of depth and significance to the horror of the film.
2. This is definitely not an attempt to diminish the trauma of encountering a life-changing event, but rather to maintain that concept of trauma in horror most often expressed as a haunting or the intrusion of the past upon the present, in ontological terms.