Claustrophobia. By definition, a persistent and irrational fear of confined spaces. Thalassophobia. By definition, an intense and extreme fear of deep bodies of water. Just one of these fears is enough to completely stun a person. To shut down their executive functions. The idea of being welded shut into a metal tube is the worst nightmare of many of those with claustrophobia. The idea of swimming in an ocean of blood, unable to see past your own nose, is the worst fear of many of those with thalassophobia. Iron Lung, however, plays on both.
The concept of the original Iron Lung video game is simple. You, a convict, must explore a moon covered in an ocean of blood. The pressure of this ocean is too high to allow a regular submarine, so you are put into the “Iron Lung,” a submarine with no windows or entrances, completely sealed shut with more metal. Your only way to see? A small camera in the side of the ship. The goal? Find something, anything that can save humanity after the “Quiet Rapture” destroyed millions of stars and billions of lives. Find this and obtain your freedom.
Released in March of 2022 and developed by David Szymanski, this small indie release gained a cult following among players. Eventually, however, it caught the attention of Mark Fishbach, otherwise known as popular YouTube Let’s Player Markiplier. Gaining an intense amount of popularity (and love from the YouTuber), Iron Lung became one of the most exciting new indie horror releases of the 2020s. This love did not stop there, however. Markiplier, completely infatuated with this game, decided to take on a brand-new endeavor. He wanted to adapt Iron Lung into its own feature length movie.
Markiplier is by no means a stranger to taking on large-scale creative projects. With such projects as Who Killed Markiplier?, A Heist with Markiplier, and even his own take on cosmos with In Space with Markiplier, the YouTuber has very much built up a strong creative reputation to have fans of both the game and the YouTuber anticipate the release of Iron Lung. With a strong and dedicated team standing behind him, Markiplier pushed forward to release his debut feature film.
Much of the concern originally expressed by skeptics was that the original Iron Lung video game was not long enough to justify a feature-length release. While there were hints of lore sprinkled throughout the original game, these were more so easter eggs than anything else. How would Fischbach be able to adapt this into a feature-length? Well, luckily for audiences, the two-hour runtime is filled with intense claustrophobia and surreal, trippy scenes that warrant (for the most part) the length of the film.
Following the same plot as the game, Fishbach puts himself in the role of the convict welded into the Iron Lung, forced to serve his sentence in the ocean of blood. The entirety of the film, apart from a few small flashbacks, takes place within this submarine. With nowhere else to go and explore, it is an incredibly ambitious task for a movie to make the single tiny location seem grandiose in scale. However, Markiplier manages to use just about every shot possible in order to keep the entire film engaging, along with the help of Director of Photography Philip Roy. The audience feels the walls closing in, the intense heat of the subaquatic prison cell, the frantic heartbeat of one man scared of what he cannot see.
The film does an incredible job of allowing the audience to feel as if they are in the position of Markiplier. The use of close-ups and the lack of any sort of exterior shot puts the audience in the Iron Lung along with the convict. While the two-hour runtime may seem daunting, the feeling of claustrophobia and Fishbach’s acting is more than enough to qualm these fears. It’s a long movie, don’t get me wrong. There are certainly times where scenes drag on for more than they necessarily need to. But this just adds to the fear. These long, drawn-out scenes engaged me even more with the adventure of the convict, gripping my seat with anticipation of what may happen.
The performances of this movie, for the most part, were pretty good. There are not enough characters or actors even to say that the acting is the biggest draw to this film. Markiplier holds his own against this onslaught of a film, with raging outburst cut back with surprisingly subtle emotional moments. This one-man-show is able to keep the audiences’ attention and concern for the wellbeing of the convict. Subtle references to this character’s backstory make sure that the monotony of the ship never gets too dull, and explorations into the deep depths of both the planet and the convict’s psyche allow Fishbach to bring his a-game.
Of course, for any creature feature, there must be talk of the creature. This movie takes inspiration from Jaws and tries to hide the creature as much as possible, allowing for the scenes in which the camera captures this toothy monstrosity to be shocking. The issue, however, is that the creature is not seen enough. For a cosmic horror film, much of this cosmic horror only happens within the last fifteen minutes or so. When it hits, though, it hits. Comparable to both the masterpieces of John Carpenter and the grotesque of Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Fishbach clearly has a grasp on how to make both cosmic horror and body horror. However, the film does opt more for a psychological thriller for the majority of the flick. While this may be disappointing to some, I found this take on the situation incredibly smart and a great move to make an originally nameless character in the game be able to carry out a full movie.
Is Iron Lung a perfect movie? No. While the practical effects are amazing, the promises of “the most fake blood used in a movie” may disappoint those looking for a campy, fun creature feature. While the film remains a bit too long for the plot, Markiplier and company do an excellent job of adapting a fairly simple concept and turning it into a tense, claustrophobic, exciting adventure, all within the confines of the Iron Lung.
