Video game adaptations of movies have a long, if not quite storied history. Starting with Super Mario Bros. (1993), adaptations of popular video games have become common, particularly in recent years. However, beyond select adaptations like The Last of Us (2023), Super Mario Bros. (2023) or Fallout (2024), they have typically been known more for being poor.
Even movies that somewhat break that mould can often be an initial source of mockery; just look at the backlash to how Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) initially designed the main character. YouTubers moving careers or diversifying is a much more common development. With YouTube being over twenty years old, a lot of historically major creators have now either retired, have heavily wound down their output, or have attempted to diversify.
Although he has started branching out into acting, Markiplier, otherwise known as Mark Fischbach, has remained a mainstay of YouTube’s landscape for the past decade, notable for his let’s-plays of video games, especially horror games. The movie adaptation of Iron Lung arose shortly after his playthrough of the game in 2022, written, directed, and edited by Markiplier, was finished in 2024 and released after two years. Iron Lung is an indie horror game, set in a post-apocalyptic future in which all planets and stars had, without warning, been destroyed in an event known as the Quiet Rapture.
Shorn of anything but a few space stations and desperate for resources, the main character, a Convict (Mark Fischbach) has been welded into a submarine to explore a blood ocean. Iron Lung succeeds in its framing. Beyond a handful of different angles, we never get an idea of what the sub looks like from the outside, no clue of the blood lake beyond seeing it submerged, and beyond a brief window into (but not from) the base itself and some flashbacks, there’s no sign of the outside world, and beyond one scene and conversations with a few others, predominantly mission leader Ava (Caroline Kaplan), there is no other character.
There are brief references to a destroyed satellite, or to the surviving satellite being moved, or to a religious cult, Eden, but no actual evidence of their existence, and the convict’s hallucinations later in the movie reduces the reliability of even that. With some editing, you could easily erase any evidence that any being exists other than the Convict, and the entities within the lake. The film thrives here.
For a first film, it was highly experimental
The set design succeeds in improving the fidelity of the once low-quality graphics, making each creek or beep feel punchier. The film’s meandering helps to build tension over time, but does drag in places. It doesn’t fully align with the original plot, especially by the end, but remains aligned enough to the original game for it to work.
The main character has understandable fears, but the writing does drift, at times, towards being amateurish, and his reactions generally feel one-note. Markiplier’s acting does need some work, and with how focused the film is on one character, this makes the damage much greater, limiting just how far Iron Lung succeeds in providing a compelling narrative by itself. Adding more characters, or even more engagement, likely would’ve dragged the movie down, but could have at least given new depth, or at least offered room for the other characters to avoid being too one-note.
For a first film, it was highly experimental, and in areas, especially with how little input it received beyond Markiplier himself, this experiment was a step too far. But for a first film as daring as this, it could have gone far worse. With the movie’s success where it has been aired—my showing of this movie had almost all the seats booked and filled—it seems that, whether due to genuine interest in the film or the fame of its creator, the film has done enough to succeed.