A new independent horror film has landed on the big screen with a bloody splash. “Iron Lung,” based on the 2022 video game of the same name, is the most recent passion project from Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, who wrote, directed, produced and acted in the feature film. For those who are unfamiliar with Fischbach, he is a YouTuber who has been posting gaming content primarily for the past 13 years. At the time of writing “Iron Lung,” he had over 38 million subscribers. Although Fischbach is known for his “let’s plays” videos — especially of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” games — he has experimented with filmmaking and storytelling on his channel many times over the years. However, “Iron Lung” is his first foray onto the big screen. 

When I first heard that Markiplier was turning “Iron Lung” into a movie a couple of years ago, I must admit I was very skeptical. The game that the film is based on is a short independent title by David Szymanski. Szymanski helped Fischbach produce the film, with the player as a  convict in an iron submersible with a windowless  — the “iron lung” in question — and sent onto a moon that is made of a blood ocean to take pictures of the ocean floor and report back to the mothership. After about an hour of exploring, using the minimal controls of the ship — forward, back, side to side-and the camera of the ship, the game ends with you taking your last picture of a creature. This is done in the depths before a gigantic angler fish-esque monster breaks through the steel cage and ends the game. On the surface, the game did not offer much content for a feature film; the single setting and the repetitiveness of the tasks were complaints some people had after actively playing the game for an hour. The concept of an hour-and-a-half-long movie of someone silently moving in a dark submarine seemed, to me, uninteresting. Thankfully, I was wrong.

The film adaptation of “Iron Lung” is set in the unique interior of the submarine from the game; however, Fischbach, Szymanski and the rest of the production who worked on the movie took the lore Szymanski had in the game and built a deeply interesting but convoluted story from it. Having seen playthroughs of the game before walking into the theater, I knew the basic worldbuilding that would be brought up in the movie: An event called “the quiet rapture” has extinguished all the stars and most life in the universe. The main character, Simon — played Fischbach plays — is a convict who is being sent down in the iron lung to make up for his crimes. If he finds information about the literal blood moon that he is exploring, there is a chance that he will be forgiven and freed. That’s what he is told, anyway. 

Having this base information made watching the film and taking in some of the more nuanced details — some of which are discoverable in the game, some of which are new in the adaptation — much easier than if I went in completely blind. I heard some people after the movie asking what they had just watched and trying to understand the plot, because some parts of the film were vague, during the ending. The last third of the film is shot in a way that the viewer can not tell what is real and what is happening in Simon’s mind as he loses oxygen. Although I personally think that this is an very interesting way to show the last arc of the film, the finale loses a little impact because there is a chance that everything being shown isn’t actually happening. 

There are spoilers for the ending until the next paragraph, so if you want to avoid spoilers, skip ahead now.

 The ending of the game is very gory, but the jump scare that solidified the game’s horror is not recreated in the film, which I found disappointing. Instead, the blood that has been occasionally dripping into the submersible throughout the movie is corrosive — why it’s taken this long to get through the ship is unclear. The blood then becomes living tendrils, which is not explained other than the overlapping voices of previous submersible operators telling Simon not to help the organization that imprisoned him because they have now seen that the quiet rapture was, in fact, a good thing. Are the blood tendrils real? Are they being operated by the souls of the people taken by the quiet rapture? What is their argument for stopping Simon? Not one of these questions was answered clearly. I will forgive the movie for not answering most questions about the quiet rapture, since the plot of the movie is about trying to figure out what happened and if this blood ocean has anything to do with it; however, not explaining to the viewer why the blood tendrils want to stop Simon seemed odd to me. It didn’t help that with both the music and the overlapping voices, the final sequence of the film had some hard-to-hear moments, although that may have just been the theater I was in.

A really nice addition to the movie that keeps the audience engaged is Captain Ava, played by Caroline Kaplan. Ava is the main voice that Simon speaks to when he is in range of the command ship and it is through her conversations with Simon that the audience gets most of its information about what they are watching. It is important to note, however, that these conversations are not boring exposition for the audience’s sake, which I think should be commended. I was also very pleasantly surprised to find that I didn’t spend most of the movie watching Simon and thinking that it was clearly Markiplier — Fischbach’s acting was very strong, and it was not challenging to see Simon as an entirely different person. Kaplan and Fischbach have good, realistic chemistry that is elevated by dialogue that feels just real enough at most points for the viewer to believe this would be how the two characters would interact. Overall, both actors do a great job of bringing up the tension and creating a world that is running out of hope. The script also successfully avoids common horror movie tropes; for example, Simon responds to the creepy occurrences in the submarine in believable ways, always grabbing whatever is close at hand to defend himself instead of walking into a dangerous situation completely undefended — something more horror movie protagonists should consider doing.

There is no denying that “Iron Lung” is a great piece of filmmaking. Every camera angle, set piece and editing choice is very clearly purposeful and there are so many fantastic moments in the script that make the movie and Simon specifically, captivating. If I didn’t know in advance that the film was entirely independent from a big studio, I would never have guessed it, due to its high production quality. The amount of practical set pieces and effects in the movie is incredible, and it elevates the entire experience. The care and love that have been put into the film are apparent, and I hope that this is not the last we see of a Markiplier production on the big screen. 

 While the production quality for this film is incrediblefrom the set to the camera work to the acting, especially for an independent film - the story can be hard to follow for people who know nothing about the film and the beginning feels a little slow.