In a world of ever-increasing movie budgets, creatively (and literally) bankrupt studios and directors with no vision, along comes Mark Fischbach of YouTube fame with the independently made and self-financed film that he co-wrote, directed and starred in.
It’s called “Iron Lung.” Is it any good? Yes.
“Iron Lung” is a sci-fi/horror film based on the short indie game of the same name and is set in a far-off future.
An event called The Quiet Rapture has taken place, leaving only a few space stations and some unexplored moons left in the universe.
The remaining population of humanity is in the thousands.
One such moon is being investigated for its potential promise of providing answers. This moon has an ocean made of blood.
With such a low population of people, a program is instated in which prisoners can opt into being sealed inside a submarine to brave the danger of the blood ocean in order work off their sentence.
We follow the perspective of one such convict named Simon (Fischbach) after he’s been sealed inside of the submersible vessel that will be used to explore this blood ocean.
This vessel, of course, is the titular iron lung that both the game and film are named after. Simon’s job is to explore the depths of this blood ocean and take pictures of the environment at the marked locations on his map.
However, he faces the challenge of not being able to see anything outside of the iron lung with the exception of the brief snapshots he can take using the camera attached to the outside of the vessel.
Thus, he must rely on the other tools he has available to him to navigate.
This is the opening premise that sets up the events of the film and the promise of a very tense and chilling story that’s certainly fulfilled.
Despite the film taking place in one location for more than 95% of its runtime, it makes the most of its setting to keep you on the edge of your seat.
Through a combination of camera shots and angles of every variety to keep the attention of the viewer, the compelling dialogue exchanges between Simon and other characters through a small speaker on the ceiling of his iron submersible.
Events force Simon to explore the small space he has to discover secrets and solve problems that arise. The movie effectively keeps the viewers’ attention throughout the whole runtime.
That’s quite an impressive feat to take the bottle episode concept and make it work for a full-length feature film.
What I find even more impressive, however, is how it’s able to be so faithful to the source that it is adapting to film.
After so many years of seeing directors subvert their source material or refuse to even watch the source material, I thought I might never see a truly faithful movie adaptation of a game.
Yet here we are, because Fischbach made the wise decision of being in regular contact with the Iron Lung creator David Szymanski during the writing process.
That helped keep the movie faithful to the original vision of the game when transferring it to the big screen.
I have a lot of respect for Fischbach as a creator after having seen his film and after seeing him talk about his experience making the film.
He is very passionate, not just about the idea of creating, but also what he chooses to create.
We need more of that in movies because we’ve been starved of passion on the silver screen for a long time.
I wish him the best in his future endeavors, and I highly recommend his film for its high quality, artistic merits and creative passion.
Grade: A
