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NZ Herald
6 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Jane Clifton: Blood on the tracks
New Zealanders may envy Londoners and Parisians their extensive commuter train networks, but the glories of mass transport come with a culture of seething resentment. Had Jean-Paul Sartre lived to experience today's Metro, he would have elaborated on 'Hell is other people', adding '… and their braying cellphone conversations, their
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Business Mayor
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
'Exit 8' is an Exceptional Liminal Thriller and the Best Video Game Adaptation Ever Made [Cannes 2025 Review]
I've long been fascinated by what I call No Exit Horror , a term I've coined for a sub-genre rooted in existential dread, where characters are trapped in singular, oppressive spaces they cannot escape. Think of such liminal space thrillers as Cube , Dead End , Pontypool , or even The Shining . I took the name from French writer/philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, of course, and like his play No Exit , these films trap their characters not just in rooms but in loops of self-denial, regret, or moral indecision. Genki Kawamura's masterful Exit 8 , which just had its eerie and unforgettable premiere in the Cannes Midnight Screenings section, uses this trope so effectively that it might just be the most exceptional video game adaptation ever made. Adapted from a cult Japanese video game, Exit 8 follows 'The Lost Man,' played with raw and adorable restraint by Kazunari Ninomiya ( Letters from Iwo Jima , Gantz ). On a tedious underground commute home from his desk job, he quickly finds himself trapped in an endless underground subway corridor, forced to detect subtle anomalies, glitches in reality, that signal whether it's safe to proceed to the next exit, aka level. He loops back to the beginning if he misses something out of place. It's the perfect metaphor for the paralysis of modern professional life, trapped in the endless maze designed by the evils of capitalism: the hallway, sterile and endless, is less a location than a state of mind. He is, quite literally, going nowhere. And I'm sure most of us can find it relatable on some level . Exit 8 is more than just a stylish horror experiment or the astute staging of a unique and inexpensive IP. It's a tragic and intimate character study following a broken hero's journey where the monster isn't lurking around a corner. The Lost Man is on his way home from a job he clearly loathes. He's exhausted, emotionally disconnected, and stuck in the passive inertia of a life he never truly chose. And then, suddenly, fatherhood looms. Read More BioWare restructures around Mass Effect The great twist of Exit 8 is that its horror and drama are mostly emotional, not supernatural or sci-fi. Kawamura has crafted a film about the terror of becoming a parent before you're ready. About accepting love when you're not sure you're worthy. The anomaly in this man's life isn't a shadowy figure or an off-kilter passageway. Instead, it's the terrifying prospect of loving someone more than yourself. And being loved in return. The hallway becomes purgatory for a man who can't admit he's scared—scared of responsibility, commitment, and growing up. Ninomiya's performance is essential here. It's not flashy, but it's deep. He expertly plays emotional numbness, with shoulders sloped under decades of unspoken guilt and generational/gender expectation. There's a quiet beauty in how little he says and how much he shows. When change finally comes, it's not triumphant. It's terrifying. And it's earned. As The Lost Man repeats the corridor again and again, each loop becomes a step along a fractured, nonlinear path toward emotional accountability. He isn't trying to escape. He's trying to accept. He's trying to become someone capable of being loved, and of loving in return. And that might be the scariest journey a horror movie has ever asked of a man. And he's not alone. The eerie and quick introduction of 'The Walking Man' is frightening, then tragic. A perfect side quest during an already pristine mainline story. The atmosphere in Exit 8 draws on a similar liminal energy felt in brilliant liminal horror projects like P.T. and The Backrooms, but where those stories revel in abstract terror, Kawamura's film weaponises drama and character study with a teaspoon of hope. Ultimately, there isn't a clear resolution. But it does provide reflection. It asks what happens to those of us who live on autopilot. Those who accept careers we hate, relationships we don't nurture, and the futures we never chose. It's about how modern men inherit silence and mistake it for strength. And how love … real, scary, adult love … demands presence and vulnerability. It demands that you exit the loop. With Exit 8 , Genki Kawamura has crafted a haunting cautionary tale for the emotionally paralysed. It's a masterpiece of 'No Exit Horror': intimate, tragic, and impressively human. Forget boss battles, this is a video game adaptation where the final level is fatherhood, and like the process of being born, the only way out is through. Summary Genki Kawamura's masterful 'Exit 8' expertly draws on a liminal horror, character study, and realist drama to craft the best video game adaptation of all time. Tags: Cannes 2025 Exit 8 Featured Post Genki Kawamura Categorized:News Reviews
New Statesman
07-05-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
That sound you're hearing is public nuisance capitalism
Illustration by Charlotte Trounce Every commuter knows the dismay of realising, after the brief elation of having secured a seat on the bus or the train, that the person next to them has decided to use their phone to play music, or make a video call, or play clips from the bottomless cesspool of internet junk. L'enfer, c'est les autres sur l'autobus avec le TikTok, as Jean-Paul Sartre would have written if he'd ever had to take the N68 to East Croydon. The normal, British reaction to this behaviour is to quietly press one's teeth together harder and harder until they explode like porcelain in a meat grinder. An even more extreme reaction, such as asking the offender to wear headphones, is occasionally suggested. In the run-up to the local elections, the Liberal Democrats proposed a policy in which 'headphone dodgers' would be fined up to £1,000. In one sense this is the archetypal Lib Dem policy: hilariously impractical, totally uncosted, designed only to produce headlines. It's also the opposite of liberal, but it was popular – a YouGov poll found 60 per cent support. When Keir Starmer was asked to support the policy at Prime Minister's Questions on 30 April, he took it seriously, and lambasted Tories who laughed at the idea. They were right to laugh, because it is a risible policy. But it is also indicative of a wider tendency in which businesses profit from providing the means for antisocial behaviour – a tendency we might call 'public nuisance capitalism'. The principle of public nuisance capitalism is that the less companies are regulated, the more they create the means for one person's liberty as a consumer to impinge on someone else's as a citizen. No government wants to intervene in the freedom of companies to sell everyone a miniature loudspeaker connected to an inexhaustible library of noise. So, public transport is filled with cacophony, and unserious politicians suggest fining people for using their devices in exactly the way they're designed to be used. Nor does the government want to intervene in the freedom of car manufacturers to sell (to pick one example) an SUV that weighs three tonnes and can reach 193 miles per hour. It is up to the consumer to make sure they do not misuse the enormous power of the machine, although having spent a lot of money buying that power, that is obviously what they're planning to do. The police, the health service and the pothole-fillers must face consequences of a choice the consumer should never have been able to make. This creates whole consumer sectors that are abhorrent to other people: the TikTok loudspeaker guy, the careless Lime bike rider, the playground vape dragon, the fast-fashion addict, the SUV speeder, the wood-burning stove devotee. These people have not only been allowed to create a public nuisance, they have been sold the means to do so by a lightly regulated market. The nuisances (pollution, danger) are what economists call 'externalities'; the public nuisance capitalism model is that the profits are private, but the externalities are public. This is socially divisive. Going by the coverage of 'headphone dodgers' in certain newspapers, Mrs Woodburner is not just annoyed but morally offended by Barry TikTok's lack of decorum on the train (she's a hypocrite, though – her public nuisance is far more damaging than his). Public nuisance capitalism is not a new problem. For more than a century, the American gun lobby has claimed that 'guns don't kill people; people do'. A more accurate version would read: 'gun companies aren't held responsible for shootings; gun consumers are'. But it is now being applied more widely, as technology amplifies everything we do, giving us an ever greater capacity for antisocial behaviour: to blast music and opinions at each other; to use each other as disposable labour or for brief, insincere relationships; to speed through the world with little thought for those who might get in our way. Businesses recognise this – which is why so many companies are 'platforms' or 'communities' in which responsibility is shared, if not abdicated – but politicians, it seems, do not. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: The English rebel] Related
The Independent
18-02-2025
- The Independent
These are the most beautiful destinations to visit in 2025
'Hell is other people' – so wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, who might have been less of a misanthrope had he spent less time in Paris, Europe 's most densely populated capital city, and headed instead for his country's quieter reaches; the tidal interzone of the Camargue, perhaps, or the salt pans of Occitania. Today, overtourism has become a problem in corners of the world where humans had barely set foot a century or two ago, let alone France; Antarctica 's filling up with cruise ships, and there are traffic jams on the summit of Everest. This isn't just terrible for the environment, but it's a surefire way to ruin a good holiday, so here are a few suggestions of lesser-visited destinations across the world which are just as captivating as their more popular counterparts. Soaring mountains, glorious beaches and a jewel box of islands glittering in the Ionian Sea – Greece is lovely in the spring, but its Balkan neighbour, Albania, promises all these treasures and more, with far fewer visitors and a greater diversity of natural landscapes packed into a smaller land area. Theth National Park in the north of the country is home to brilliant hiking and startling sights like the Blue Eye, an azure spring gathered in a deep hole in the limestone landscape. Nearby, the fantastically named Accursed Mountains form the Albanian stretch of the Dinaric Alps. This place of fearsome, jagged peaks, enclosing green glacial valleys alive with wildflowers in the spring, is surely worth visiting before word gets out and it becomes one of Europe's hottest hiking destinations. Elsewhere, the vibrant capital, Tirana, has the feel of a place making up for lost time. The city's diverse architecture reflects its cultural variety, its movement through fascist and communist dictatorships, and its subsequent opening up to the wider world since the 1990s. Eye-catching buildings include the Pyramid of Tirana, built as a museum to dictator Enver Hoxha; the monumental Namazgah Mosque, the largest in the Balkans; and the House of Leaves, an espionage museum housed in a former Gestapo and communist secret police surveillance centre. Where Tirana really comes to life, though, is its contemporary cultural scene. Modern art museum Bunk'Art is a vibrant symbol of reinvention housed in a converted Cold War bunker, while upmarket Blloku – once out of bounds to everyone but the communist elite – has been reborn as a buzzing district of restaurants and trendy bars. Oman Understated, tasteful and home to exquisitely beautiful desert, coast and mountain scenery, it's something of a mystery why Oman continues to fly under the radar of tourists visiting the Middle East. While the gauche Gulf hotspots of Dubai and Abu Dhabi draw travellers like moths to a flame with their glitzy shopping malls and outsized construction projects, traditional Oman has taken a different approach. Skyscrapers are banned and new buildings follow a lovely neo-Islamic style – all clean lines, crenelations and three-pointed arches – prime examples being the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque and Royal Opera House, both highlights of the low-key capital, Muscat. Linger in Muscat to admire the architecture and experience the pleasingly ramshackle old harbour and gold souk of Muttrah, before escaping for the countryside. The green mountains of Jebel Akhdar spill over with pink Damask rose blossoms in the spring, while the rocky landscapes of Jebel Shams are home to Wadi Ghul, the 'Grand Canyon of Arabia', where Egyptian vultures soar above abandoned mudbrick villages and glittering date plantations. Most remarkable of all is the Musandam Peninsula, an exclave of Oman separated from the rest of the country by 100km of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Here, fjord-like inlets called khors ripple the rocky coastline, making for truly stunning boat trips onboard a traditional wooden dhow. Bali, Indonesia's Island of the Gods, has been desecrated by overtourism to such an extent that the Indonesian government announced a moratorium on new hotels in parts of the island last September. Unsurprisingly for a nation of 17,000 islands, Indonesia offers plenty of alternatives and none are more fascinating than Sulawesi, whose southern capital, Makassar, is a 90-minute flight from Bali. The eleventh-largest island in the world, Sulawesi is home to thousands of miles of coastline which include postcard-perfect beaches to rival their Balinese counterparts, all with a fraction of the visitors. Tanjung Bira beach in South Sulawesi is an almost laughably perfect tropical idyll – bone-white sand, swaying palms, you know the brief – while North Sulawesi offers some of Indonesia's best diving at Bunaken, a marine wonderland of technicolour coral gardens, colourful nudibranchs and some 2,000 species of fish. Partly due to its extremely mountainous topography, Sulawesi resembles a cultural patchwork, with the heavy colonial influence evident on the coast – Makassar's Dutch-built Fort Rotterdam and City Hall, for instance – giving way to distinctive ethnic groups in the mountainous interior. The highlands of Tana Toraja, for instance, are home to the Torajan people, whose culture reflects a fascinating mixture of colonial Catholicism and indigenous animist religion. The Toraja are famed for their elaborate death rituals, with their funerals resembling multi-day festivals: hundreds of pigs and buffalo are sacrificed (and barbecued), palm wine flows freely and the air is fragrant with the perfume of a thousand crackling clove cigarettes. It's a great honour in Torajan society to have as many attendees at your funeral as possible, so tourists are welcome to join any of the funerary parties which happen to be taking place nearby. Admission is free, barring a small gift for the bereaved family – a bottle of palm wine, or a brick of cigarettes – and you'll have to pay a guide in the Torajan capital of Rantepao to take you there. You'll likely spot the Torajans' impressive rock-cut tombs and the giant wooden effigies of the dead, known as tau-tau, which stand guard over them, gazing over the spectacular Torajan landscape of rice paddies, karst mountains and plodding water buffalo. Zimbabwe An African safari occupies pole position on many a traveller's bucket list, but some of the continent's biggest tourist draws, such as Kenya 's Masai Mara and Tanzania 's Serengeti, are beginning to suffer the effects of overtourism. For a quieter alternative, consider Zimbabwe, which offers fantastic wildlife-spotting opportunities with less of the overcrowding problems of the continent's busier nature reserves. Hwange National Park in the country's northwest is the largest nature reserve in Zimbabwe and one of the biggest in Africa, at 14,600 sq km. It's teeming with wildlife, including the Big Five so sought after by safari-goers – lion, elephant, leopard, rhino and buffalo. There's also the small matter of the Victoria Falls, less than two hours' drive to the north. While not exactly a hidden gem – it's one of the largest waterfalls in the world – this magnificent cascade is a must-visit while in the area, and the Zimbabwean side has significantly more viewpoints than across the border in Zambia. Most Zimbabwean adventures will begin and end their journey in the capital, Harare, where it's worth lingering to explore the wide avenues lined with jacaranda trees, the National Gallery, showcasing photography, sculpture and paintings from Zimbabwe and beyond, and the National Archives, a fascinating and often harrowing showcase of the country's colonial-era history.
