I am neither a gamer nor a consumer of YouTube. What I am, however, is a huge fan of the use of fake blood, which Iron Lung has in spades\u2014the movie reportedly went through 80,000 gallons<\/a> of the stuff\u2014and of self-financed science-fiction features with singular backstories. So I took myself to the cinema for a frigid Sunday-night showing, arriving right as the trailers ended. I expected that the audience would be minimal, based on my experience<\/a> watching films in my small college town, but to my surprise, the room was packed with Gen Z\u2013looking attendees, who were already seated. My audience clapped when Markiplier\u2019s name came up on the screen at the beginning, and remained rapt throughout all two hours of the movie.<\/p>\n The story follows that of the 2022 game, by David Szymanski. In some distant future, all of the stars and habitable planets in the universe have vanished in an event called the Quiet Rapture. The humans who are left (those who happened to be on space stations at the time) have discovered a moon with an ocean of blood on it. In need of resources after running out, they have decided to explore this ocean, and have discovered something at the bottom of it that is a source either of hope or of terror. (This is one of many plot points in Iron Lung that\u2019s ambiguous and is left, eventually, unresolved.) The remaining humans\u2019 access to advanced technology has seriously declined, but not so much that they can\u2019t cobble together a final try at exploration. All they\u2019ll need is a pilot.<\/p>\n Enter Simon, the character played by Markiplier, a convict who has unwillingly participated in an act of terrorism, the stakes and politics of which are never fully explained. Dressed in tattered gear and sporting long, apocalyptically dirty-looking hair, the handsome young streamer looks suitably tough\u2014think Daryl Dixon<\/a>, but in space. At one point in the movie, Simon strips down to change shirts, and Markiplier reveals a cut chest with a weird futuristic holster<\/a> on it that\u2019s already inspiring flushed posts aplenty. (Markiplier has sold nudes on OnlyFans before\u2014though solely of the type that past purchasers warn prospective buyers<\/a> are \u201ctasteful, no full frontal\u201d\u2014so this isn\u2019t the streamer\u2019s first rodeo when it comes to internet gawpers.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Sam Adams <\/a><\/p>\n Simon is offered his freedom if he allows himself to be sealed into an \u201ciron lung\u201d\u2014a submersible with an interior boasting one room, I\u2019d estimate about 10 feet by 20 feet, where most of the equipment can be found, plus a crawl space that gave me the extreme heebie-jeebies. This coerced pilot has no control over whether and when the submersible is lowered or brought back up\u2014that\u2019s at the discretion of Ava (Caroline Rose Kaplan), the commander of the crew of the larger ship, who\u2019s in the movie mostly as a voice coming over the radio, with a few memorable appearances at the porthole, when the iron lung is brought up for retooling between missions. Simon can only toggle the up and down arrows to steer the craft, use the camera to take terrifyingly impressionistic photos of what\u2019s outside, and try to hack into the onboard computer. (This scene, when Simon tries \u201cpassword\u201d and \u201cpassword1\u201d to get in, was one of the many moments during the film when people in my screening laughed out loud.)<\/p>\n Simon is, in other words, playing a game, complete with external constraints and changing objectives. At the beginning of the movie, he settles into the sub\u2019s chair and starts to familiarize himself with the controls. The camera captures him from behind\u2014broad-shouldered, miserably hunched\u2014and I thought to myself: We are about to watch Simon do a Let\u2019s Play<\/a>, a genre of gaming video that Markiplier is no stranger to. That intrusive thought kept recurring as various obstacles arose and Simon\u2019s frustrated reactions made my audience giggle. A Reddit user told the uninformed<\/a> that Markiplier often \u201cyells and says fuck a lot,\u201d so it makes sense that people familiar with his other work would experience these moments of Simon getting pissed off at his situation as art imitating content. (One commenter wrote: \u201cWhenever he was angry my immersion was immediately ruined because I felt like I was watching one of his Getting Over It<\/a> videos.\u201d)<\/p>\n But one should not imagine that Iron Lung will let you enjoy seeing Simon solve the problem of the ocean of blood. This is not The Martian. Instead, many of the things Simon tries to do inside the sub seem to have little purpose, and little effect. The movie uses the elements of the game to reach for something loftier: a cosmic horror, with some kinship with other outer-space-is-possibly-or-definitely-evil films, like Event Horizon or Solaris, but one in which you are never really sure what this doomed mission has discovered. By the end, we can see creatures in the ocean of blood, we can hear voices come over the intercom when the equipment is disconnected, the sub is leaking blood on the inside, and Simon shouldn\u2019t be alive, given the state of his oxygen supply. So can his perspective be trusted?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Trump Called This Year\u2019s Grammys \u201cUnwatchable.\u201d It\u2019s Not Hard to See Why. <\/p>\n The New Game of Thrones Show Finally Gives Us Its Villain Headlines Are Calling the Melania Movie a Surprise Box-Office \u201cSuccess.\u201d Don\u2019t Believe Them. Markiplier has created an unusual situation for himself. While still a relatively inexperienced actor<\/a> in traditionally produced movies and TV, he carries all 127 minutes of the film almost entirely alone. This is the kind of boldness that having 38\u00a0million followers will get you! Some sequences work better than others, but to his credit, Markiplier does deliver the intensity needed at the end, when Simon makes a desperate and impressively gruesome sacrifice. (I will refrain from spoiling this, but trust me: You can really see those 80,000 gallons of fake blood put to use.)<\/p>\n Admittedly, the film is about 20 minutes too long, and I\u2019m not the only one<\/a> who wanted the plot to be 25 to 30 percent more fully articulated. But even so, my fellow cinemagoers sat through the entirety of the end credits, like dutiful parents refusing to leave the auditorium until the entire holiday recital has concluded. As I gathered up my coat, I was left feeling as if I\u2019d witnessed the birth of something totally new. There are worse things for cinema than for YouTubers to spend their fortunes financing independent feature films. On Monday, one theater posted<\/a> that Iron Lung got \u201cwild turnout for an indie movie,\u201d and thanked the fans who\u2019d recommended that the cinema program it.<\/p>\n Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770073687_19_.jpeg\")
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\n Headlines Are Calling the Melania Movie a Surprise Box-Office \u201cSuccess.\u201d Don\u2019t Believe Them.
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