Iron Lung: Almost A Great Cosmic Horror Film
Iron Lung Has Storytelling Choices Holding It Back
I watched Iron Lung at an odd time. Within the last few months, I’ve seen both Project Hail Mary and Ash, and in a way Iron Lung could be described as a combination of both those movies, taking the cosmic horror from one, and the lone person trying to help investigate an apocalyptic problem from the other.
But both of those movies fully solved for a problem that Iron Lung didn’t, and it makes Iron Lung a much weaker movie than it had to be. I’m a fan of filmmaking rules with catchy names like “show, don’t tell,” but I don’t know the name for the one Iron Lung ignored. I am going to call it “the one-character problem” for the sake of clarity. It’s simply this: it’s hard for an audience to remain engaged watching a character silently do something for long stretches. This is why Rocky needed to show up in Project Hail Mary. This is why a lot of lone-person movies will have them hallucinate a person to talk to for most of a film.
The Long Silences Really Ruin The Film’s Tension
This is not to say—and I know someone is already voicing this complaint—that Markiplier’s character doesn’t get any dialog with others. He does. Those are the good scenes. But there are long stretches where we get no internal or external monologs, no talking to camera, no computer reading out information. I actually had to watch this movie in two sittings because I was actively falling asleep during the slow moments.
Really, the movie suffers from a few structural problems—especially in its second act. I fell into a rhythm of waiting for something to happen because it’s a movie and not a documentary about someone navigating a creepy ocean. I don’t know how much to credit the filmmakers, and how much to credit the original video game (I have not played Iron Lung) but the movie gives us, right away, like five different—interesting—sources of tension, but doesn’t fire those Chekov’s guns at nearly the speed that keeps an audience engaged.
Iron Lung Could Have Had So Many Scary Scenes
That said, they are such good ideas. The camera being the only way to see out of the ship is inspired, and the reveal of how it shows only x-rays extra creepy. Cosmic horror relies on hidden information, and only giving us snapshots, proximity sensor alerts, and scenes of Markiplier being thrown around evoke the threat of monsters without desensitizing the audience to how they look. Iron Lung even manages to make blood scary in a new way by using its presence as a sign of the ship being about to buckle in. Iron Lung is obviously a lower budget movie, but it turns many limitations into potential strengths. Never once did I not believe that Markiplier’s character was trapped in a tiny metal doom-box surrounded by blood.
I think the ultimate problem is it’s just too long. All the actors do a great job—Markiplier is an amazing physical actor—and the climax is all cosmic and gory and impressive visually, but Iron Lung simply has too much filler. I know cosmic horror almost necessitates characters having trouble trusting their senses, but the (presumably) concrete details are spooky enough without hallucinations or dream sequences. No twists or fake outs are needed. Cut thirty minutes and make it a little easier to understand the socio-political stuff happening, and I think we’d have one of the best new takes on cosmic horror in a long time.
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