Hello everybody, my name is Jim and welcome back to Nerd News Social! I’m borrowing Conner’s soap box today to bring you a little taste of terror as we delve into the deep world of Iron Lung! Directed by, written in part by and starring none other than Markiplier!
As per, we’re breaking this thing down in three categories; story, acting and overall.
Story 8/10
Set in a post apocalyptic future where all habitable planets and colonizable solar systems have quietly blinked out of existence, we’re stuck inside the titular iron lung with Simon. Simon is a convict who was known as Simon the Butcher, but the crime for which he has been sentenced was the wholesale destruction of a space station that he SWEARS wasn’t his fault. He’s been offered the chance to commute his sentence if he’ll dive into an ocean of literal blood on an alien moon, welded into a submersible pod and do some scans of the ocean floor.
This seems simple enough until he finds not only a huge skeleton at the bottom of this sea of blood, but something alive down there. Upon further investigation he also finds the remains of the previous ship that had been sent into the depths…
This story is a small one to start with but opens up wide towards the end with some genuinely unsettling, fever-dream, eldritch horror elements and even some body horror. The whole thing is claustrophobic, stressful, gore-soaked and sweaty. The folks behind this film put in some incredible work to get you worried for Simon, even after the reveal of who he is and what he’s done.
It bears mentioning that this story is based on a video game as well – I haven’t played it myself but it’s available on all major platforms and was released in late 2022.
Acting 9/10
So, I am a fan of Markiplier and his various projects. I’m used to him being a bit of a goof while doing Let’s Play style videos on YouTube and various other projects which I’d tend to class as comedic in the main. This is by no means that. He gives a stirring performance as Simon, making you feel for this guy who’s being punished for some relatively ill-defined but still terrible crimes. You feel every bit of his claustrophobia and unease as he’s working his ass off to figure out the mystery of exactly why he’s been sent down here and what he can do to, at last, be free.
There are other actors as well, including Troy Baker! That’s right, the voice of Joel Miller from The Last of Us is in here as well! Caroline Rose Kaplan plays the other main character we see on screen, Ava, and she likewise does a great job.
The writer and producer of the Iron Lung video game also makes a cameo! Ethan Nestor provides additional voice work as well – anyone familiar with Unus Annus will remember he was the other half of the team behind that along with Markiplier.
Overall 8.5/10
While I feel like having prior knowledge of this world and story might be helpful, I wouldn’t say you’d absolutely have to play the video game to get what’s going on. The setting and world is teased out to you bit by bit over the course of the film. The cinematography is fantastic, with very creative use of lights as symbols and a sense of cramped, wet, rusty confinement preserved throughout the whole movie. I will say that many scenes were very dark and I’m not sure if all of it was intended as some bits were hard to make out and to the detriment of the movie. This may be less of an issue when watched in a higher quality theater, however. (The closest screening to me was in a somewhat older theater.)
Conner Jim’s Final Thoughts
This is a fantastic movie for anyone who’s into strange horror stories, folks who want to support films based on video games and, obviously, fans of Markiplier or the original game itself.
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