I went into Iron Lung knowing very little about it, other than an older video about the game and how creepy it is. From what I saw of the game, I expected a tense, claustrophobic adventure in the sea of blood. That is not what I got.
Let’s get things started with the positive, which is that they certainly did a lot with the $3 million budget. While that is to be commended, you can also see the limitations of that budget in play quite a lot, which is, I think what took me out of it early on.
By the time we got to the 45-minute mark of the movie, I had basically checked out, keeping one eye on it while doing other things. That feeling of claustrophobia, which was so evident in The Deep by Nick Cutter, simply wasn’t there. The low-res camera shots from the exterior of the craft did not help either, as it was often tough to tell what we were actually looking at. That detail removed almost all of the fear from what might be outside looking in.
Putting together a movie that consists of one person on screen for 99% of the time is a tough sell, and tougher still when it is not an established actor. I know nothing about Markiplier and his YouTube channel, and while he was decent enough, he didn’t do enough to keep me glued to the screen through the multiple slow spots. Perhaps it was because we didn’t really glean enough about his character to give a shit about him.
Now, where things did get interesting was in the last 20 minutes, where it turned into a full-on bloodbath. I will say that there were elements of the finale which made me think of Event Horizon, albeit a shoddily made remake made for Tubi. I think if they had trimmed 30 minutes from the runtime and gotten to this finale a whole lot sooner, it might have earned a higher score from me. For most of the film, I had 2.5 stars in mind, but the final third nudged it up a half star.
3 stars out of 5
As a fellow lifelong horror nerd, I super disagree, which I hope isn't an offense to you but a friendly discussion of different perspectives on media.
They spent 5 mil, and made like $52mil in ticket sales, which from my opinion is for good reason. The low res camera wasn't that, it was a high-radiation x-ray taking shots through a dense sea of blood, which is why it basically killed the welder he blasted with it out of desperation once they surfaced him but wouldn't let him out. Eventually you see that what he thought were bones were a monster moving in the sea, because he didn't know at that point it was an xray not a camera until he surfaced and learn more. As the movie progresses, you learn the blood-sea is made of human blood, there is a hive-mind sabotaging him in order to keep the info he learns from reaching the surface, you see the blood slowly eating away at his skin and begins to turn him into a monster. We eventually see that some of the sea-monster's bones and body look to be made of mutated human parts. The humanoid figure he begins seeing inside the ship (and assumes to be the spirit of the convict sent down before him who, as he reads his message, ended his own life) gives him the clues he needed in order to download the downed ship he found's data (we see a monster biting the ship), and helped him find the last known seedling. The movie wasn't advertised as a claustrophobia film, which I think was purposeful - the only claustrophobic parts were when he had to go into the crawl space, twice - the last time, with it full of blood that was actively harming him and almost drowning in it. The blood begins to invade the ship and overtake it as a hive mind as he continues to morph, and it manipulates him by using the woman's voice who had died in that ship he found. He loses concept of time, begins to wonder what's real, and the manual states he is being exposed to radiation every time he hits the camera. The blood coagulates in an X across where he had placed the medical tape in order to use the xray for light once the ship broke down, permanently cementing down the button, suggesting this hive mind benefits somehow from the radiation or wanted him to see it. The captain went down in her own towing/recovery ship in order to find him once she learned he was able to download the data from the ship which was destroyed by the monsters, but she ends up in the same fate as him, telling him they will both die in this mission, and tells him he needs to get that vital info to the surface - the repeated mantra. "This is bigger than us." You learn it's possible that the space stations had snapped into another reality/dimension rather than the rest of the universe disappearing in the Quiet Rapture, and that he'd joined a rebellion cult that taught its followers humanity would not survive - wasn't supposed to - and opposed any efforts to do so. Then he had been recaptured by the org and convicted if a crime he had tried to stop. In the end, as the blood-sea and its creatures prevailed against him, it is that last seedling known to humanity that destroys the monster and explodes the sub so the evidence can reach humanity. I really enjoyed M's acting, the plot thickened with every scene, and the super unique lore was cool. With movies like this where everything he hears, reads, or sees is basically an escape-room clue, I can see how checking-out early on would ruin it for the viewer. My kids (adults) and I absolutely loved it. 🖤 I rly liked Backrooms too, but my partner didn't get it so to each their own!🐦⬛
Thanks for the review.