Iron Lung Parent Guide

“The Quiet Rapture”, as it’s been called by the survivors, changed everything. Suddenly, mysteriously, all known stars and inhabited or habitable planets vanished, leaving behind the shocked remnants of humanity living on a few space stations and colonies. One of these unfortunates, Simon (Mark Fischbach), is even more unfortunate than most. As a result of some accidents and political tensions, Simon has been convicted of a crime. His punishment is to be welded into a one-man submarine with minimal equipment into a sea of blood – literally. Since the Quiet Rapture, these seas have appeared on a few moons, and it’s believed that they hold the answers humanity needs. If Simon can make it back to the surface after taking some pictures and samples on the sea floor, then he can earn his freedom - but that’s a big if…

I was expecting a full-blown dumpster fire, but this film is more of a smoldering recycling bin. The dialogue is spare and sincere (rather than voluminous and glib, which is worse), the premise is vaguely interesting, and YouTube gamer/writer/director/star Markiplier (Mark Fischbach to his mother) is a significantly less terrible actor than I feared. Is that praise faint enough to be damning? That’s as good as it gets. 

Iron Lung is a dark film, and I don’t mean tonally. It’s nearly impossible to tell what’s going on in some scenes, and worse, it barely matters. Much like the video game it’s based on, Iron Lung has very little going on. In the game, the player has access to maybe six buttons – submarine depth, direction, and movement (forward and reverse, the luxury), as well as the camera and computer. So you spend all two hours of this movie watching Markiplier sit around in a tube and press one of half a dozen buttons – sometimes two at a time, when he’s navigating. It’s deadly dull. 

This is obviously a poor choice for family entertainment – ocean of blood notwithstanding, the movie is slow, dark, and unexciting for audiences of basically all ages. Even in my nearly-full theatre of excited Markiplier fans, I heard a few yawns. The film further discourages younger viewers by dumping nearly 50 f-bombs throughout the film, although it feels like more since there’s so little dialogue. 

It’s hard to condemn the movie utterly – I think the idea is workable, and the film does manage to create some interesting and unsettling moments. They’re just buried in a mountain of, well, nothing at all. Just a guy in a tube, pressing any of half a dozen buttons and getting into arguments with strangers over the radio. It would take a cinematic genius to make this film interesting enough to fill two hours – and there’s no genius here. 

About author

Keith Hawkes

Keith Hawkes graduated from Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada with a degree in English and History. His interests are movies, American literature, science fiction, almost every kind of music, and museums. He enjoys criticizing films for fun - although he's okay with being paid for it.