Iron Lung (2026)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Based on a 2022 video game of the same name, Iron Lung starts promising. Opening narration tells us that a "Quiet Rapture" occurred, as many stars and planets suddenly disappeared and reduced the human population. Presumably, we've colonized the stars at this point, so it's a more existential threat than the similar phenomenon we saw in Stephen King's The Life of Chuck last year. The main character, Simon, is a convict who gets assigned on a mission in exchange for his freedom. He's forced into a small submarine, about the size of an escape room in the real world, alone and without any training. Hell, he's without guidance either: nobody seems able to tell him what he's looking for or meant to be doing. I can see how this would work well as a game, investigating the sub (its name provides the film's title) and using whatever is at hand to try and figure out your own purpose while mysterious things start happening to you.

Unfortunately, the film is a bit of a dud. Directed, produced, written, and edited by Mark Fischbach, the YouTuber of apparent renown who goes by the moniker "Markiplier," the film also stars the man himself in what is basically its only character role. And there's a lot to be said for this obvious labor of love. Atmospheric and absorbing, I found myself slowly swept into the intrigue of his existential horror trip. Who is he? Why is he here? These questions lead eventually to more pointed ones: did he deserve to be here? We get inexplicably little insight into this character, though, as half our energy is constantly diverted to attempting to understand the setting.

They're apparently diving, you see, into an ocean of blood. Literally. It's not clear if this is another planet or perhaps what remains of Earth, and indeed maybe it doesn't matter. We never even see the outside of the submarine. This is a single-room experience, not unlike Hitchcock's Lifeboat or Rope, or more recent thrillers like Buried. Using flashes of x-rays, he's able to "see" outside the sub via x-ray images in black and white momentarily projected on a huge screen that makes up one wall. Slowly getting the hang of his mission, Simon eventually locates what appears to be a massive skeleton on the ocean floor, seemingly his objective, and must then retrieve a sample. 

Curiously, at this point, he starts having misgivings about the purpose of his dive and the reason for collecting such a sample. This is where the film really lost me. Sure the voice speaking to him via intercom (Caroline Kaplan as "Ava," whose vocal performance I quite liked) is inconsistent and a bit shady, but his identity and motivations don't change: surely he still wants his freedom, even at the cost of doing a strange, risky task for dubious benefit. It's just an odd choice to alienate the viewer from Simon at this late point in the film, which is already ridiculously overlong at 127 minutes. We should be more invested in him, not less.

Fischbach clearly loves the material and wants to give it justice. And it's an impressive production for such a small budget and a first-time independent feature venture. Yet for all its nightmarish restraint, haunting lethargy, and moody sensory experience, Iron Lung is a miserably boring movie. There's just no getting around that.

Attempting to mimic the style of a survival, puzzle game is admirable, to be sure, but it is also foolish. Films are meant to be seen. Storytellers in film should always default to show us rather than tell us. So the problem with this approach to such inert material is that we aren't shown anything. For the entire movie. Worse, the story hinges on being able to know/understand what's happening contextually, and there is none here. We're constantly teased with images of the exterior landscape (ocean bed, so... seascape?), yet they are almost entirely abstract. I couldn't tell a blessed thing on that screen, until a shot or two that might have included what appeared to be a rib bone, and one that seemed an alien or monster's face. Part of what's so frustrating about this, too, is the budget: okay, so you can't actually show us what's out there in an ocean of thick, dark blood. But you can't even give us decent drawn or "photographed" images via the technology you've included as a crucial element for that sole purpose?

As it is, Simon is just not an interesting character, and Fischbach is not an interesting actor here. Simon is mostly single-note as a stressy, sweaty mess, and it gets grating before long. His dialogue is clunky and unnatural; his delivery is even less natural, with a forced concern that comes off more like he's compensating for not knowing his lines by sounding increasingly angry. And that seems to be a subtle indication of a larger theme: if violence is the only way for some people to assert themselves, what does that say about nature? We're in an ocean of blood, after all, and before film's end it's confirmed to be human blood. What are these monsters swimming in this mysterious ocean? Is this all that's left of Earth? And how many times as the enigmatic company conducted such missions? We learn Simon is not the first, and much like the Weyland-Yutani company in Alien, this organization has ulterior motives and is all too willing to make personnel sacrifices in the name of profit.

What can I say? I would have liked at least some of my questions answered. I would have liked to see this film rather than just listen to most of it. I would have liked to like it more. Admiration for the impassioned art and joy at what this might signal for runaway independent releases like this in the future does not nullify my suffering through two hours of boredom with only brief, fleeting moments of intrigue.