Markiplier's Iron Lung Is One of the Defining Cosmic Horror Movies of the 2020s

Humanity has always dreamed of exploring the great unknown, but within that ambition is the pervasive dread of not being able to understand what lies beyond. Will our findings validate our place in the universe or generate a greater sense of alienation? Dimensional rifts, outer space and even our own bodies have the ability to reveal horrifying truths that we're not equipped to handle. What if we ventured out among the stars and they suddenly disappeared? What if we went searching for answers by way of a lone explorer who has no other choice but to keep looking? What if said pioneer drove themselves mad trying to maintain some semblance of routine amid being enveloped by one of the core components of the human body? This is the driving force behind one of the defining cosmic horror movies of the 2020s: "Iron Lung." Based on the David Szymanski horror video game of the same name, "Iron Lung" envisions a harrowing future where every star and planet has disappeared due to an event called the Quiet Rapture. With humanity's remnants residing on spaceship colonies, a select few are forcibly chosen by the Consolidation of Iron (COI) to explore moons that are covered with oceans of blood. The criminal participants are welded inside a cramped submarine nicknamed the Iron Lung before being lowered to take grainy pictures of what lies beneath the cosmic anomaly. Piloting the SM-13 model is a man referred to as the Convict (Markiplier). All he desires is his freedom, and should he produce results from within his ramshackle prison, that's exactly what he'll get. It's the Convict's only motivation to keep going in the face of isolation, technical malfunctions and other unspeakable horrors. In the event you're not online enough to be familiar with the name, Markiplier (aka Mark Fischbach) is a YouTuber who has been making videos on his channel since 2012. The videos on his channel, which is currently subscribed by over 38 million people, range from video game "let's plays" to live streams. Over the past decade, however, Fischbach has taken it upon himself to branch out and try new things like the "Unus Annus" experiment, in addition to interactive video projects like "A Heist With Markiplier" and "In Space With Markiplier." He uses his platform to take big swings, and "Iron Lung" is by far his biggest one yet. It's a startlingly impressive feature directorial debut that I haven't stopped thinking about since. Fischbach's fascination with "Iron Lung" grew out of a "let's play" of Szymanski's game in May 2022 in which he found himself attuned to its mechanics. The game, much like the film, takes place with the cruddy submersible vessel that you blindly operate through a control panel. You're given a set of locations you need to hit in order to take pictures, which can only be found through punching in the correct coordinates. The more you play "Iron Lung," the greater this sense of impending doom takes over. You keep going because it's all you really can do. The shocking final note only makes the journey that much more rewarding. It's easy to see why Fischbach latched onto the idea, especially in hindsight. "Iron Lung" was self-funded and self-distributed by Fischbach himself, in addition to his directing, producing, editing, writing and acting duties. It was only meant to play in select theaters, but a deeply successful word-of-mouth campaign led to "Iron Lung" opening on over 4,000 screens. The film has since earned nearly $50 million on a $3 million budget, which is a truly insane victory for horror. This kind of thing shows that independent markets can be successful outside of the studio systems and their stale business models. There's a version of this film that's given a bunch of money, a movie star leading man and a more conventional plot. But it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. At 2 hours and 7 minutes long, "Iron Lung" is very much not in a hurry to deliver easy scares. It's a surprisingly patient slow burn that takes pleasure in allowing the audience to simmer in the Convict's' claustrophobia. I was initially concerned that the Iron Lung itself would grow stale, but Fischbach keeps it interesting. There's always a new and distressing angle of the aquatic prison's wires, leaky pipes and control panels to switch things up. It's the sign of a resourceful filmmaker. Low-budget films must work with what they have, and Fischbach utilizes every resource at his disposal. There's a below deck sequence in the dark that's so well staged that it momentarily conjured the spirit of Ridley Scott's "Alien." But even when a new corner of the sub is revealed, the film still manages to feel appropriately suffocating. It reminds me of what James Wan accomplished with "Saw," and look how that turned out. We receive glimpses of the blood ocean through grainy photographs that flash on screen for just a few seconds before fading. It leads to some of the greatest scares and chilling imagery. There's one photo in particular that makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. It's always going off too, creating a sense of paranoia that you're about to see something. For the most part though, it's your mind playing tricks on you. Fischbach truly is the glue that holds this all together considering the film relies on his performance. He often speaks with a COI captain named Ava (Caroline Kaplan) through a rusty speaker, but for the most part, the Convict's on his own. The only thing more frightening than canvassing a blood ocean you know nothing about is having to do it alone, which is where Fischbach proves that he understands what makes great cosmic horror. There's further information about this world if you care to look for it, but "Iron Lung" succeeds because it's all a bonus in service of the bigger picture. The film is largely about watching the Convict's mental deterioration as the lines between hallucination and reality start to blur. Andrew Hulshult's score creates a foreboding and intense mood that illustrates the Convict's struggle to believe in what he's been sent after. I've seen some critics decry the two-hour-plus runtime despite the protracted length playing to the film's strengths. At a certain point, I too started to lose my mind as to whether I could trust anything I saw. It's always fun when a horror movie is able to play with paranoia in this manner. The film's self-made success, sharp tension and endearing lead performance makes "Iron Lung" a one-of-a-kind horror experience. Not to mention that it broke the record for the most fake blood in any movie ever, rounding out to about 80,000 gallons worth. It beats Fede Alvarez's "Evil Dead" by a long shot. It's also pretty crazy to me that this featured more blood than the Sam Raimi movie that came out on the same weekend ("Send Help"). "Iron Lung," in many ways, captures the cosmic horror of existence. There are so many days where it's difficult not to feel like you've been welded into a prison (personal or otherwise) while destructive forces exist in the margins; but we persevere because that's all we can do. We need to face the horrors. We need to survive. We need to live.