Studio: YouTube
Director: Mark Fischbach
Writer: Mark Fischbach
Producer: Will Hyde, Jeff Guerrero, Adrian Testolin
Stars: Markiplier, Caroline Kaplan, Elsie Lovelock, Elle LaMont, Troy Baker, Mick Lauer
Review Score:
Summary:
In a post-apocalyptic future, a convict forced to pilot a claustrophobic submersible encounters cosmic horrors while exploring an ocean of blood on a moon.
Review:
With the incredible box-office success of Curry Barker’s “Obsession” and Kane Parsons’s “Backrooms,” horror history will mark 2026 as the year the terror torch passed to a new wave of YouTube creators becoming top names in fright films. Although those two movies each eclipsed his in profit, praise, and mainstream awareness, 2026’s YouTuber revolution actually started at the top of the year with “Iron Lung,” the first feature from filmmaker Mark Fischbach, who is better known as “Markiplier” to nearly 40 million YouTube subscribers that regularly watch his “Let’s Play” videos showcasing various PC and console game playthroughs.
Whether it’s envy, ageism, gatekeeping, or some other unfair benchmark, there’s a contingent of the “old man yells at clouds” crowd who loudly warn this changing of the guard is awful for the genre. From “too young” to “too inexperienced,” their claims contend this path from content creator to maker of motion pictures is an unearned easy road circumventing the more challenging, noble route of a cinema student paying dues in traditional trenches to properly hone their craft.
These naysayers are focusing their frustration in the wrong direction. Instead of unnecessarily worrying about “outsider infiltration,” people not in the YouTube bubble ought to be sprinkling grains of salt on acclaim trumpeted by any of these online personalities’ armies of dedicated fans. Because if someone listens only to the Markiplier maniacs inundating IMDb with countless 10/10 user reviews, they’re liable to mistake “Iron Lung” for the “Citizen Kane” of epic cosmic horror. In reality, an objective perspective not drunk on cult Kool-Aid will tell you it’s a tepid, two-hour trip into exhausting dreariness no one would shout about if it came from an unknown name.
Unfavorable opinions of the final product can’t change Fischbach/Markiplier’s remarkable accomplishment. Although it was adapted from designer David Szymanski’s same-named indie video game, Markiplier not only wrote, directed, edited, and starred in “Iron Lung,” he financed the project on his own, distributed it into thousands of theaters without studio support, and is managing physical media production independently as well. Even if they had access to the same resources and connections, few people could carry out the commitment to seeing an undertaking of this magnitude through to completion, making “Iron Lung” a commendable achievement purely on those metrics. The problem is the finished film makes it evident that Markiplier could have used a knowledgeable guide to filter out a mountain of inessential material to make the movie play more like a polished production and less like a personal vanity project.
Taking place in a nondescript future where an apocalyptic event extinguished all the stars in space, the film’s very vague storyline follows Simon, an expendable convict who can earn his freedom by piloting a one-man submersible through an ocean of blood that mysteriously appeared on a moon. Simon’s only means of visual navigation comes from an x-ray camera that intermittently takes black-and-white pictures of the sub’s submerged surroundings. His mission is to photograph a strange skeleton, then to retrieve a sample from said skeleton, then to survive the hallucinatory experiences that come from being immersed in unexplained, otherworldly horrors that mutate Simon’s body and haunt his increasingly unstable mind.
“Iron Lung” takes place entirely inside a sparsely furnished, darkly lit set, which is meant to be a submarine so small in size, it can only be operated by one person. Its interior design includes rusted pipes, a console no bigger than a schoolkid’s desk, and grimy dials labeled with embossing tape from one of those analog, handheld letter-punching things that went extinct following the advent of computer printers. With brief exceptions where another face may appear onscreen for several seconds, there’s only ever one actor, Markiplier playing the lead role, onscreen the whole time too.
If the numbers listed on IMDb or Wikipedia are to be believed, “Iron Lung” supposedly had an estimated budget of $3,000,000. That figure is difficult to trust, not because those sources are notoriously unreliable, but because it doesn’t look like anything close to that amount of money made it to the screen. With a single stage the size of a studio apartment and a single costume consisting of a tattered sweater and dirt-dappled headband, “Iron Lung” looks like an installment of the 1990s “Outer Limits” reboot stitched together for a nickel after the production budget was blown on that season’s preceding episodes.
Speaking of sci-fi shows that started in the ‘60s, “Iron Lung” also brings to mind the original “Star Trek” series with the way it simulates a ship being bumped around by shaking the camera and having Markiplier flop on the floor. When he’s not replicating Shatner stunts, Markiplier’s Simon spends his time merely marking maps, looking at digital readouts, and pressing buttons on a computer keyboard. Adding in inserts of blinking lights and random gauges, this cutaway clutter doesn’t inspire suspense so much as balloon the runtime, and tipping over two hours is a lot of length to spend with the same guy repeating the same unexciting actions, grim expressions, and stressed-out sentiments over and over again.
Constricted by a concept with limited backstory and even less substance behind what little fiction exists, there’s no sense of scale or stakes to make the movie reach out and grab its audience’s attention. We’re told about this universe-altering event through narration, but since we rarely see anything outside of the submarine, we’re essentially passive passengers in a blank box of undercooked atmosphere that never manifests a motivation to invest in the character’s situation. The whole thing feels like a greenhorn actor performing a one-man show in a college campus playhouse, not a desperate hero fighting to save mankind from eldritch entities in an immersive fantasy.
While pacing might be the movie’s main struggle, “Iron Lung” also doesn’t have a strong awareness of what needs to be on the screen or for how long. The film has some truly quizzical shot choices, including a few that are unintentionally out of focus. These aren’t quick cuts either. Sometimes the camera lingers for long moments on blurry blobs or muddy images with the viewer never getting any wiser about what it is they are even supposed to be seeing.
An overlong experiment in DIY filmmaking, “Iron Lung” is only for hardcore Markiplier fanatics who want to obsess over hard-to-discern details in search of interpretive meanings behind cryptic clues that may be hidden, or may only exist in that fan’s imagination. If the name Markiplier is unfamiliar or carries no value, “Iron Lung” would only be worth boarding if you’re aching to toil through a demo reel seemingly more interested in showcasing its featured figure’s theatrics than in developing a spectacular story.
Review Score: 40
An objective perspective not drunk on cult Kool-Aid will tell you it’s a tepid, two-hour trip into exhausting dreariness.