Anyone online in the movie sphere in January and February of 2026 will most likely have heard about Iron Lung. The movie adaptation of the horror game by the same name, which is directed, written, and funded by Mark Fischbach. A large part of the movie’s success and popularity is owed to Fischbach’s celebrity and the game’s fandom. But how does it hold up as a film?
The source material
Before I begin my review of Iron Lung in earnest, I think it is important to address its source material. Full disclaimers, I have not played the game. However, I am very familiar with it thanks to my younger siblings’ adoration for both the game and Fischbach’s Let’s Plays of it. In the game, an unnamed convict, acting as the player’s avatar, is sent deep into an ocean of blood in an attempt to gather information their jailers believe could be vital to the survival of humanity, in the wake of an intergalactic apocalypse dubbed The Quiet Rapture. It, quite predictably, ends with the death of the player’s avatar. This is followed by a final message, which tells us that none of the data that their character died to get will ever reach the people who could use it.
The movie is a very loyal adaptation of the game by the same name. Of course, adjustments have been made as needed to better fit the medium of film. It retains all major plot points while building upon them to give fans of the game new information and details. The most important of these changes is that our protagonist now has a personality. As does the main correspondent who is communicating with him throughout the movie. They are named Simon and Ava, respectively.
Who is Markiplier?
Mark Fischbach, more commonly known as Markiplier, is the director and partial writer of the movie. He also stars in it as the protagonist, Simon “The Butcher.” He is a YouTuber who rose to success and fame. Specifically for his streaming and recorded playthroughs of indie horror games. Among the Gen-Z generation who grew up watching him on YouTube, he is most famous for his Five Night’s of Freddy’s content. At least within my own social circle. It is hardly the only thing he’s gotten attention for, after all.
After playing the game Iron Lung for himself on his channel, he began the development of the movie by the same name roughly thirteen months after the game’s initial release. He produced it in collaboration with David Szymanski, the creator of the game, who co-wrote the film’s script, helped with pre-production, and appeared as a cameo in the movie himself.
The movie
Now, on to the real meat of the review: the movie! Currently rated 6.5/10 on IMDb, Iron Lung has been a huge financial success since its release in January 2026.
“The Quiet Rapture. Supplies dwindle. Infrastructure crumbles.
Too few to rebuild, too many to feed. Humanity decays.
But don’t despair, my sons. I tell you now that there is more to these moons than meets the eye.
The Consolidation… they hide their technology, their people… They won’t tell you what they’ve found, but I will.
One moon stands apart from the rest. And in the darkness of that moon…an ocean of blood.”
Iron Lung, opening scene
These are the opening lines of the film which accompany Simon’s first descent into the blood ocean. Which is somehow, impossibly, human blood. They work to establish the truly grand scale of the devastation of The Quiet Rapture, and the very narrow confines of the movie’s set. They provide the audience with their first look at the claustrophobia, isolation, and the literal and figurative unreliability of what we are seeing and hearing on film.
Throughout the movie, Simon suffers a concussion, alcohol poisoning, radiation poisoning, probable oxygen deprivation, mind-altering contamination of the cosmic-horror variety, and time-loop fuckery, before eventually dying. And as a result, the audience is never sure what, if anything, they are seeing or hearing from the movie is real. This is the real source of the rising suspense for the movie. As the film goes on, the audience looks back at earlier points in the movie and wonders when what was happening stopped being real or if it ever really was.
Is it really horror?
However, in spite of that, I cannot honestly call the film scary. Some objectively horrifying things happen to Simon throughout the movie’s two-hour and five-minute duration, but at no point did I feel like I was watching a horror movie. Putting aside the audience members with a fear of enclosed spaces, blood, deep water, or underwater cave exploration, I doubt anyone else would either.
When I saw this movie in theatres, it was with my younger siblings, of whom two are eleven and thirteen respectively. Despite the movie being rated R in the United States, and 14A/15A in Canada and the United Kingdom, neither of my grade school-age siblings (who are ironically named Simon and Ava) was distressed or unnerved at any point in the movie. The surface beneath the ocean might spasm like a living organ. There might be a chimera of humans living in the veiny tunnels of the flesh floors. But it didn’t even manage to startle, let alone scare, an eleven or thirteen-year-old.
Can the kids watch it?
It would be better to classify this movie as ‘psychological suspense’ than a horror. I am firmly of the belief that the movie only has the ratings it does because of the cursing and the frankly ridiculous amounts of (purportedly human) blood on screen. The deaths in the movie don’t happen on screen. There is no human-on-human violence directly shown. All injuries featured are, for the most part, fantastical and wholly disconnected from how gore looks in real life. And there is no nudity or sexual innuendo of any kind. If you’ve got a child horror buff in your family who can sit through a longer film, and who you don’t mind hearing a few curse words, this movie is perfectly safe to show them.
Setting
As mentioned above, the entirety of the movie takes place in a small, ill-equipped submarine. Its colour palette is desaturated and dim. It is composed of several interconnected sections that make up a small room. A space that shrinks as the movie goes on and sections are damaged, imploded, or flooded with blood. It also has a crawl space that leads to the backup generator.
Narrative
The story follows Simon across the two-hour run time as he progressively becomes more debilitated by various ailments. The audience knows his efforts are futile. Simon knows his efforts are futile, on some level. But he still desperately does everything he can to survive. Eventually, he begins to hallucinate. Which does not help the fact that there are clearly supernatural eldritch-adjacent aspects of his experience independent of his deteriorating mental and physical state.
Eventually, he becomes disconnected from the pully system, which would have allowed him to surface, trapping him in a series of interconnected underwater tunnels. Tunnels that are inhabited by something affectionately dubbed as Ellie by the designer responsible for its creation for the movie. Within the tunnels, there is a fragment of The Quiet Rapture that seems to distort time, space, and the human senses. It may well be the source of the supernatural force responsible for bringing the ocean to life. The same force that is infecting and transforming Simon.
Readability
Now, for me, this movie’s biggest flaw is its readability. Most scenes are too dark to understand what is going on on screen. And while this does ensure that the audience feels the same sensory deprivation and confusion as Simon, it also makes it incredibly difficult to follow the visual storytelling. There is often so little visibility and so much overlapping noise that it is very easy to miss important elements of the plot.
You can’t follow the story or lore intuitively. Really, you need to watch the film more than once to really understand what’s going on. That is, if you are like me, and were only filled in on the game’s lore after having watched the movie. Even my siblings, who are very familiar with the game’s lore, missed parts of the plot because they missed important scenes or dialogue. It’s just that difficult to make out parts of the movie.
I myself didn’t realize that Ava died. I didn’t realize what the monster was. And I missed the implicit time loop that Simon may be trapped in. I only picked up those things after I had watched the movie twice AND watched several long YouTube analysis videos breaking the movie and its plot and lore down scene by scene. That was the only way that I could actually follow and keep track of the parts important to the plot. And know what I was supposed to be paying attention to.
The movie’s execution
That said, this movie has its strong suits. For a movie about one man in an altered state of mind desperately wandering around and tinkering with what is essentially a dark room, it was surprisingly engaging.
Acting
Part of that is likely due to the acting. Fischbach has a naturally expressive face, and makes for a decent actor. A large part of the audience coming into the film with a strong pre-existing attachment to the man behind the character certainly doesn’t hurt. That they are given over two hours to invest and grow attached to Simon is really what seals the deal, though.
Sound direction and visual design
For me, though, my favourite part of the movie was the sound direction and visual design. I might not like how difficult it was for me to follow the story, but when it was bright enough to see what was going on, and the background noise was quiet enough to hear the soundtrack, sound effects, and dialogue, what they did with it was very enjoyable to watch and listen to.
We get a lot of creative and unusual visual angles and changes of camera focus. And what little colour and light is used is deployed very economically. While the soundtrack is less engaging, it goes a long way to increasing the viewer’s immersion. Especially in the absence of light or a clear image on the screen. It also helps make the setting feel more realistic and tangible. From the annoying alarms to the shifting and groaning of metal to the sounds of movement throughout. I suspect with very few changes, this movie could be adapted to an audio-only podcast. Certain plot elements would be lost, of course, but enough would remain to craft a cohesive story. You can’t say that of most movies.
How does it hold up as a movie?
Overall, removing it from the context of the Markiplier and Iron Lung fandoms, not very well. At least from a narrative perspective. The way it tells the story leaves much to be wanting. It has faced very mixed reviews among film critics, reviews I agree with. But I do believe it will become something of a cult classic among certain movie fans, as well as fans of the game. I can see myself returning to this movie as one of them. Then again, I have often been told I have poor taste in films. So, take my recommendation with a grain of salt.
Does financial success guarantee its legacy?
Even though the film has found great financial success, I don’t believe that it has received that attention solely on its own merit. It’s not a good enough movie to have garnered this level of success. The film is definitely good enough to have found success more generally, though. I’d say it came out at the right time, with the right advertisement and media climate. But if Iron Lung does end up enduring in popular memory, I will be happy to be proven wrong. If anything I’ve said about the film intrigues you, then I recommend you sit down and watch it. Though maybe skim the plot of the game on Wikipedia first, for the best viewing experience.
