Movie Review: "Iron Lung"; Markiplier’s Ambitious Indie Video Game Adaptation Sinks Under The Weight of Cumbersome Material
6/12 ForReel Score | 2/5 Stars
Most of Iron Lung’s legacy will center upon the nature of its’ release. This is a grassroots passion project form YouTuber Mark Fischbach (Markiplier) who self financed a strange cosmic horror chamber piece that he directed, wrote, edited and starred in. His fans demanded that the major theater chains pick it up and then showed up for him in droves. $18,000,000 opening weekend with zero marketing spend. That’s more audience loyalty than many of the people we dub major movie stars have. However, to be impressed by Iron Lung’s success is a vastly different experience than actually sitting down to watch it. Fischbach’s overzealous attempt to craft a complex character driven story around the lore of a 2022 indie video game - essentially a windowless submarine simulator - sinks.
Iron Lung takes place in outer space after a “Quiet Rapture” makes all stars and planets disappear. Humanity is hanging on by a thread with a couple of space stations and is mining for salvage wherever they can. We zoom in on Simon (Fischbach), a man convicted of destroying one of said space stations. In exchange for his freedom, he’s tasked with exploring an ocean of blood on one of the visible moons in a cramped submarine that seems on the verge of bursting at any given second. He’s tasked with taking pictures of the ocean floor using a cumbersome radioactive camera. As he ventures through the cavern with only a paper map to help him, he soon discovers that he is not alone in this horrifying red sea.
It is important to understand the source material that Fischbach is working with, which I played the night before seeing this. You’re in a first person perspective and must navigate the submarine through narrow caverns to ten different points on the map where pictures need to be taken. Since there is no window, your only means of navigation are directional buttons that guide you along the X and Y axis detailed by the map. Obstacles come across your radar as dots, and you must summon the will of God to squeeze the sub through them. If you ever struggled with middle school math (and I did) it is essentially a survival horror version of a slope/intercept alien blasting computer game that the math teacher would make you play when they got tired of explaining Y=MX+B or whatever. A pretty boring experience, to be honest, but it does have a certain charm that could’ve made for a decent B-Movie.
Fischbach lovingly recreates the game’s setting and aesthetic. The dinky directional throttles, analog screens and most importantly the giant rectangular button in the back of the sub that slowly activates the black and white camera are all one to one. There’s an opening stretch with minimal dialogue that captures the game’s experience perfectly. Full of tension due to pure sensory deprivation. Unfortunately, once that amusement wears off, there’s still 107 minutes remaining in the film.
The story starts to overcomplicate and endlessly loop its very limited cul-de-sac of possibilities. Fischbach’s screenplay is hellbent on translating the disorienting nature of video game walkie conversations about vague lore to screen but with such a small scope of visuals to play with, it becomes mind numbing. He’s not a horrible actor. In fact, his ambition to lead a two hour plus bottle film for his first major outing is almost enough to sell the performance. He’s somewhat emotive, especially when yelling, but it’s clear that Simon’s gruffness is a bit performative. You can practically hear Fischbach thinking “how could I sound more like Sam Worthington in Call of Duty: Black Ops” as he howls out certain lines. I’m not sure if even a brilliant actor could’ve elevated this nonsensical material so it may as well star the person who is the most passionate about it on the planet, but it is definitely an unpolished performance.
The few images that venture outside of the sub are striking. The ocean of blood is exactly as disorienting as it should be. A couple of dream sequences give us a couple of psychedelic images of the outer space setting that is tearing apart at the seams. Fischbach clearly has ambitions of crafting a trippy horror flick with images that would burn their way into the audience’s brain. A couple of the starkly bright radiation ridden photos of the creatures Simon finds himself surrounded by almost do the job, but they’re too sparse. The sparse material and limited budget never allow this to be the film it so clearly wants to be.
I see potential in Fischbach. He has the right sensibility to craft excellent B-Movies on future outings. Hopefully with the next one, he starts delegating. A more experienced editor would’ve been able to parse out the 40-50 minutes that could’ve come out of this. A different star could’ve made this feel less like a vanity project. A co-writer might’ve found more human elements that Fischbach’s plot driven screenplay fumbles. For now, we’re left with a seemingly endless drudge through blood that somehow manages to make a finale that features 80,000 gallons of practical blood feel underwhelming. I cannot imagine anyone who isn’t a loyal subscriber getting much out of it, but considering that Fischbach’s following could populate a small country, perhaps that’s good enough for him.