Iron Lung might be one of the most talked about films so far this year (yes, I know we’re only one month in). The film is directed by, written by, produced, edited and stars Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTuber Markiplier, who has over 38 million subscribers and self financed the production and distribution. The film is based directly on a small indie game of the same name.
Iron Lung follows a convict who is welded into a submarine to search a blood ocean on a desolate moon, in order to find results on what might have happened to missing stars and planets, but he discovers more than dark secrets down there.
The absolute biggest point from this films release is just how well this film has done at the box office, especially in relation to the film’s budget. Mark funded the project entirely by himself and this film isn’t released by a major Hollywood studio. The main part of the marketing for this film was just Mark on his own YouTube channel, which was able to reach his nearly 40 million subscribers, who have turned out in numbers to watch it, and then people are talking about and it reaches a wider audience. It’s gone from a tiny distribution to worldwide. It’s very interesting, at a time where some people believe young people don’t want to go to the cinema, and that cinemas are dying. A film with such a small budget doing this well, is only going to mean good things for small cinema, but what the lesson studios will probably look at and take from is to put YouTubers in movies, which is something we’ve already seen before. Multiple YouTubers and streamers appeared in Free Guy, Logan Paul appeared in The Thinning, Smosh: The Movie, you also recently had Shelby Oaks which was written and directed by Chris Stuckmann. None of those films (minus Free Guy which I’m not counting as they were just cameos) went onto have great success of make as much as what Iron Lung has. It’s seen as passion project, and that’s what gets people.
Coming in at over 2 hours, this isn’t an overly short film, and especially when there isn’t a whole load happening at times, it certainly drags at points. The convict is alone in this submarine for the entire time of the film, you only see other people for a couple of minutes, and we get a lot of him talking over a speaker to surface crew. Mark does an okay job, but acting doesn’t feel like his strength. I’d like to see what he can do if he was just behind the camera directing the film. He would then have a similar type of trajectory as the Philippou brothers, who’ve had success with Talk to Me and Bring Her Back.
Films where they are set entirely in one location, are some of my favourite type of films, I think straight of the greatest in that genre, Alien which is perfect. But what works with Alien that is missing from this film is, the actually element of scariness. There was 1 moment inparticular that I thought the film was going to do much more with being a horror pretty early on into the film, but chooses not to go that way, and I think it would be so much stronger and there would be a great strength of paranoia if it chose to go that way.
Overall, Iron Lung at times struggles to keep you locked in by dragging out certain slow parts of the film. At the very least, it’s great to support smaller cinema, and is an interesting concept, which certainly feels the most like a video game that I have ever seen. Markiplier deserves all the respect for this film getting the buzz it has, and the impressive box office it’s gone on to receive, and I’m sure it won’t be the last we see of at the very least a film he’s involved with.
What did you think of Iron Lung?
I managed to do a triple header yesterday, this film was the first. I hope to get reviews of both of the other 2 as well, one more likely today and the final one tomorrow. So to be sure not to miss out on those be sure to find me @floodersfilms on Facebook, X, and Instagram or via the buttons below.
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