However niche Iron Lung may seem to those who aren’t Markiplier subscribers, the film has officially broken into the mainstream to a degree that demands attention.
Photo: Markiplier
If you’ve recently found yourself looking at box-office figures and asking, “What is Iron Lung?,” you’re not alone; you’re probably just born before the year 2000. YouTuber Markiplier (real name Mark Fischbach) has made his feature-writing and -directing debut with the sci-fi horror film, an adaptation of the 2022 video game of the same name. He’s also the movie’s star and, for much of its unwieldy runtime, the only actor onscreen. That would be a tall task for most performers, let alone one as new to this as Fischbach: While he’s made a name for himself doing “Let’s Play” videos of horror games like Iron Lung, this is his first foray into big-screen acting.
Iron Lung is very much not for everyone — this is “The girls that get it, get it” cinema. But it turns out there are an awful lot of people in that category, as evidenced by the fact that this self-financed movie without a distributor pulled in more than $18 million over the past weekend, nearly besting studio horror release Send Help. However niche Iron Lung may seem to those of us who aren’t already Markiplier subscribers, the film has officially broken into the mainstream to a degree that demands attention. With that in mind, I attended a Tuesday-afternoon screening in search of answers to all the questions you might have about Iron Lung.
No, but really, what is Iron Lung?
Based on the 2022 video game by David Szymanski, Iron Lung takes place far in the future, after an apocalyptic event known as the Quiet Rapture has caused the disappearance of all of the stars, with only a paltry number of humans on space stations left as survivors. Fischbach plays Simon, a convict forced to pilot a submarine — the titular “iron lung” — deep into a moon’s ocean of human blood. (Don’t ask where the blood ocean came from; that’s but one of the many unsolved mysteries here.) Armed with limited navigation and an X-ray camera that allows him to “see” through the sanguine sea, Simon’s mission isn’t entirely clear, but it becomes increasingly obvious — to him and to the audience — that it’s not one anyone expects him to return from.
Did this really come out of nowhere?
Not if you ask Markiplier’s fans. The video game Iron Lung was well received in its own right and earned added interest following the implosion of the Titan submarine in 2023. (Grim, yes, but it’s hard not to make the association as soon as you hear the first urgent “hull breach” warning.) The story of how Fischbach adapted the game is impressive in its own right, as is the way he got it into so many theaters. The filmmaker encouraged his highly engaged audience both to call up theaters about programming Iron Lung and to reserve advance tickets. By the time the movie actually opened, some showings had been sold out for weeks. Normies may not have seen this coming, but Markiplier’s followers were ready and waiting.
Is it actually good?
Well, no. For the majority of its two-plus hours, Iron Lung feels like watching someone else play an unbearably tedious game. A staggering portion of the movie involves seeing Simon turn the sub, drive forward, take a picture, mark his coordinates on a map, then turn the sub, drive forward, take a picture — you get the idea. The backstory, doled out in glimpses of Simon’s past that are more flashes than flashbacks, is largely indecipherable, as are what could generously be called the third-act reveals. In the last 20 minutes, Iron Lung finally arrives somewhere almost interesting, but by that point, a man sitting in the row ahead of me had been loudly snoring for more than an hour.
Can you say anything nice about it?
Sure! Those last 20 minutes are pretty engaging, even if some of that engagement is squinting to see and interpret what’s going on. Fischbach’s use of practical effects and gallons of fake blood allows for some satisfyingly gross body horror. On the whole, Iron Lung looks much better than you’d expect given its $3 million price tag, a reminder that doing things on the cheap can be a real step up visually from bigger-budget CGI. (Sorry, Send Help.) And while I may have been bored to death on a personal level, I can also acknowledge that it’s nice to see younger audiences seemingly riveted by something that amounts to YouTuber slow cinema. Take that, panic over vanishing attention spans!
Why are audiences going crazy for it?
As the only ancient millennial in my theater, it was clear to me that the obsession over Iron Lung is generational. Yes, that’s anecdotal, but it aligns with other anecdotal evidence that Markiplier’s audience skews younger. Particularly for fans who grew up watching Markiplier play video games, there’s an obvious appeal in seeing him act out a popular game on a bigger screen. Moreover, the sparseness of the film’s storytelling allows for endless theorizing, which has kept the online discussion going and increased the hype. Just look at the (very daunting) spoiler thread about the movie on the r/Markiplier subreddit. I will not be watching Iron Lung again to look for little details I might have missed, but I can understand why its diehards might want to.
Does it make sense if you don’t know the game Iron Lung?
Not really. See the above Reddit thread for more detailed explanations of the game’s complex mythology, which is doled out haphazardly over the course of the film. (And such small portions!) As Iron Lung reaches its blood-drenched climax, it transitions from claustrophobic paranoia to something more cosmic — eldritch horrors abound! The game won’t help you here, either, but you can use your imagination to parse out some kind of meaning, whether literal or metaphorical. Just don’t expect true closure or anything resembling an explanation.
So,are YouTubers the future of cinema?
Let’s all take a deep breath. Remember Shelby Oaks? Of course you don’t. The low-budget horror film, which actually got distribution from Neon, was a box-office and critical disappointment despite plenty of buzz. Much of that interest came from writer-director Chris Stuckmann, a YouTuber with more than 2 million followers who was making his feature-film debut. Now, this isn’t a perfect one-to-one comparison — Markiplier has more than 38 million YouTube followers, for starters — but it is an example of an online following not translating to more-mainstream offline success. Meanwhile, the box-office pull of a movie like 2022’s Talk to Me can be attributed more to strong reviews, word of mouth, and A24’s marketing magic than to RackaRacka’s YouTube following.
Regardless of whether you think Iron Lung works as a movie — and I’ve made my feelings known — it’s still something of an anomaly, a lesson soon to be learned by others trying and failing to repeat Fischbach’s achievement.
Aren’t you underestimating these potential projects the same way you underestimated Iron Lung?
Probably! There will certainly be copycats who take the right lesson from Fischbach when it comes to distribution, namely turning followers into a hype team that drums up enough interest and enthusiasm to force theatrical expansion. Whether they’re able to pull that off to the same extent remains to be seen.
But YouTube is only a small part of the picture — there will always be hits we don’t see coming in the horror genre, which cultivates intense audience loyalty that translates to consistent overperformance at the box office. Of those surprise breakthroughs, the best comp for Iron Lung is 2024’s Terrifier 3, another blood-soaked low-budget indie that shocked everyone when it triumphed with an $18 million weekend. These kinds of true cultural phenomena are hard to predict and even harder to replicate. For the time being, my focus is on hoping the next one is better paced.
