Iron Lung and Isolation

The long-awaited Iron Lung film adaptation, a project spearheaded by Markiplier himself, finally came out a couple days ago, and a group of friends and I got together to go see it today. I think we all went into it with different ideas and expectation of what we would see, but I know that coming out of it we all had the same stance:

That was an awesome movie.

I'm not enough of a film buff to be able to offer any kind of critique or in-depth analysis of the film as a whole, but I wanted to talk about my thoughts, things I noticed, and why I feel like it was such a great movie. I'm obviously going to be mentioning specific aspects of Iron Lung, so if you care about spoilers for the game by David Szymanski or the film by Markiplier, this post is probably not for you.

For those of you still here, I'm sure you're familiar with Iron Lung, either the game or the film, so you know the premise. A submersible, welded shut, at the bottom of an ocean of blood. There's a lot more to the lore and the worldbuilding behind that setting, but ultimately that's the part that matters. A convict must pilot the submersible and capture photographs of whatever is down there, in exchange for their freedom when they return to the surface. That's where our story starts, both players of a game, and as an audience to a film. The main difference is who the convict is: us, or Markiplier. Once you're submersed, there's no radio contact, no communication, very little light. It's just the pilot, the map, and the controls of the craft. The game is a deceptively simple process of turning the sub, moving the sub, taking a picture, repeat until end in just an hour or two of gameplay. The movie has a similar feel, being a deceptively boring premise to watch, but by the end you don't even notice that two hours has passed. You start the film thinking about Markiplier being in a movie, and by the end you forget who even pitched it to you in the first place, and are instead engrossed in what's unfolding, right to the very end. I was pleasantly surprised by the end at how much Mark's acting allowed me to forget that this was his movie, and instead focus on the story being told. I was worried that wouldn't be possible for me, as I'll admit, I've been a fan of Markiplier for a very long time. On top of that, the only other major projects that I've personally seen him in (A Heist With Markiplier and In Space With Markiplier, respectively) were more humorous in nature, not without their proper gravitas, but elevated by the fact that it came after a comedic setup and follow-through. Going in, I wasn't sure if I would be able to separate Markiplier from Mark in terms of his role as an actor, but I was thankfully proven wrong the further the plot progressed.

The cinematography is excellent, they did a wonderful job portraying the long and dreary passage of time, without making us literally watch him pilot a sub for five hours. Yes, there are slow moments, quiet moments, but they're not there without reason; the time that we spend watching Mark's character Simon pilot through the blood ocean, having to mark a paper map by hand, manually steering and propelling, watching him discover aspects of his craft that he was never told about, learning how to do the impromptu job he was assigned, are all valuable moments that we get to spend understanding the character and how he thinks, how he problem-solves, how he goes about a task. We get these transient scenes were he's simply moving from one point to the next, and yet these moments give us a glimpse into his life, his mind, and the general state of everything. These moments are anything but empty, and I think the movie wouldn't be the same without them.

The reason that I wanted to write this post in the first place is because I feel like Iron Lung was one succinct theme that permeates the entire film. Iron Lung is a story about isolation. It's about being alone, and what that feeling does to someone one the precipice of life and death. It's about being pushed to extremes, about vying for survival, about making tough decisions even when you may not get to see the outcome. Iron Lung is about isolation, and choosing to break the silence by taking matters into your own hands.

It doesn't take advantage of jumpscares or cheap loud-noise, flashbang tactics in order to scare the viewer. In fact, most of the movie relies on a far more subtle method of getting into your imagination and making you imagine the scene yourself. Welded shut into a metal tube. Breathing a limited supply of air. Navigating an ocean of pure blood, seeping through the metal and dripping in. The speaker doesn't respond when spoken to. You're all the way at the bottom, with no way up, only forward. What do you do? Do you just do your job and hope that the people above are watching? At what point do you wonder if they've lost track of you? At what point do you question the purpose of your task? The honesty of your offer? Do you really get to go free when you're done? Will you be allowed to live? Will they even bring you up when you're done?

Iron Lung's theme is in your face the entire time, never is there a moment where Simon is not grappling with the feeling of isolation. Even when he's brough up for the first time since being sealed in, there's a thick window between him and the captain he speaks to. When he's lowered down, the radio cuts out more and more until there's nothing but silence. A single pilot, alone, with nothing to sustain him but the faith that someone knows he's down there. Despite this, the theme of Iron Lung is easily missed, because there's nothing that specifically forces you to think abut the film's themes and ideas, between all of the other things that start happening. It's easy for me to say that Iron Lung's isolation is obvious, but to be fair, I never had that thought while I was in the theater. I was engaged with everything as it was happening, so many things on my mind, that I didn't really feel the loneliness that Simon feels. In a theater full of people, surrounded by my friends left and right, it's easy to not be affected by it, but sitting alone, thinking about Simon and the position he was put in, the ordeal he went through, it's much easier to identify that feeling.

The movie's screentime is dominated by Markiplier in the role of the convict Simon. We get to see the captain that sends him on this mission for a scene through the window on the submersible, and there are two other crew members obscured by warped glass and camera focus (though one of them is apparently Seán McLoughlin, Jacksepticeye himself!), but for the vast majority of the two-hour runtime, we are watching Mark inside the submersible. There was a pretty heavy weight on his shoulders to play the leading role and dominate the screen as the sole performer, and all things considered I think he did a pretty great job. There's probably things that you could nitpick or critique, but I think Mark did an excellent job of not only playing his role, but playing it well and connecting with the audience emotionally. Simon is stoic, if not rageful, so when he breaks down and tears up, you want to join him. Even when he's frustrated, you're with him, and it's an immediate release to see him take out that frustration in the film. Mark does a great job of making his emotions yours as well, which lends itself to connecting audiences with Simon as a protagonist. Even when we learn about why he was convicted, what happened that lead him to this situation, you don't want to blame him. Nobody deserves to go through what he goes through, and even a few minutes into the movie, you want to fight the higher-ups on his behalf and make sure he goes free. When he's sent back down into the ocean, his frustration is shared, and when unexplained things begin happening, his fear is yours.

Speaking of characters, I do think that there is someone I would consider a second character that spends the entire film with Simon, and that is the submersible itself, the SM-13. The very first thing we see in the entire movie is a brief exterior shot of the SM-13 being lowered into the ocean, and that very last thing we see is the sole surviving part of it. There's not a moment where it isn't on screen, and I think that it's role in the story qualifies it as something of a character of it's own. It has it's own issues, faulty wiring that causes sparks, thinner parts of the hull that cause blood to seep in over time, and we see Simon becoming more familiar with it over the course of his mission, whether that's reading the manuals, or performing maintenance himself. Simon and the audience grow more intimate with the SM-13 over time, learning it's quirks and limitations, and by the end it almost feels painful when you see how much damage it's sustained, and watch it fail in various ways. It's comparable to a character death when you see the blood slowly rising from the floor, and the lights in the coordinate display go out. Like saying goodbye to an old friend, someone who carried you so far. I consider the SM-13 to be a major character in Iron Lung, if only because that's how Simon views it, apologizing after hitting the console in frustration. It stuck with me the way that he reacted there, treating it like it really was a co-pilot who had helped him get where he was, helped him stay alive. It means more in the ending when we see it slowly fall apart, that we have to say goodbye right alongside Simon.

Though speaking of Simon and the ending, I was worried early on about how the film would handle the end. The game obviously ends with a sudden and climactic death when the player is finally brought face to face with one of the ungodly creatures hiding in the depths of the blood. It works incredibly well, after an hour or so of strange sounds and unsettling imagery captured on camera, to finally meet one of the terrible creatures you've built up in your mind and face an untimely demise. It's almost a trope in smaller indie horror titles to kill off the player at the end as a convenient way to get one last scare in at the end of a game, and wrap up the player's experience with a neat, blood-covered bow. Going into the movie, and seeing how faithful the opening is to the opening of the game, it made me a little nervous about how they would handle the ending. If they chose to let Simon live, it could give this feeling that everything was going to go according to plan anyway, so what was the point of all the tension? Conversely, if they chose to kill him off, it could leave us wondering what the point of it all was, if he was just going to die anyway? This thought about the ending was in my mind from the very start, but as I allowed the movie to carry me through the plot bit by bit, those worries started melting away, and by the time we were given a final ultimatum, I was decidedly satisfied with whatever they decided to do. By the time I was actually feeling the ending closing in, I was no longer worried about either outcome, and either one would have been satisfying in its own way and given the film a clean, rounded ending that made it all feel worth it in the end. I think that the ending was excellent, and a really great way to end Simon's character arc and the story of Iron Lung as a whole, but I could also see the other ending happening, though perhaps with less impact as the way they chose to do it. I have no complaints about how it went.

By the time the ending title card hit and the credits began to roll, I was content with the arc created by the plot of Iron Lung. The journey was excellent, every moment connecting you to a part of the world, no time wasted on excess exposition, just a really smooth, organic progression of events that leaves you thinking about everything that we just went through together after it all ends. Simon's journey is shared so directly with the audience, while also granting enough mystery and vagueness to give the world around him a depth and richness. I found myself wondering about some of the things that were said, not in the sense that I was confused, but more in the way that I want to know more about that world. Despite that, I hope there's not a sequel. I don't think we need another game, or movie, or a show, or anything of the sort. I think that Iron Lung, as a game and a film, are a complete, self-contained story that doesn't need a bunch of extra fluff. There's an obfuscated aspect to the worldbuilding that leaves the audience wondering, there are mysteries that are left unsolved, and I don't think any of it needs a definitive answer. I think part of the allure of Iron Lung is the mystery, the lack of information leads to the audience filling in the blanks with their own understanding, and it allows the things that are definitively stated to have a unique and precise impact when the audience has built up the unknowns using their own personal thoughts and assumptions. One of my favorite parts about the original game is the way that it places you in the role of a convict being punished with a promise of freedom, cursed with a mission to earn their own life, lost in complete isolation. The same can be said about the movie, placing you in the shoes of the convict Simon, making you compare yourself to him and wonder how you might act in the same situation. The horror is only partially supplied by the film, a lot of the horror comes from your own mind, filling in what you don't know or can't see, and supplementing it with what would get to you the most. Iron Lung simulates the experience of being alone, being isolated, and it makes you question your own role in that scenario. What would you do? Would die in the depths, alone, just another wrecked submersible in an ocean of human sorrow? Or would you be like Simon, and fight for just a chance at hope?

Iron Lung is an excellent film about isolation, about what it does to someone, and the lengths that person would go to in the hopes of eventually being free. Coming out of the theater, we all shed our expectations and ideas of what it the movie might have been, and we all had the same stance: It's an awesome movie. From start to finish, it's a great journey, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say it's necessarily a genre-defining title, it's absolutely a fantastic horror movie, and a wonderful videogame adaptation. Following the story of Simon and the SM-13 was more than I expected from a movie based on such a small game, and I think it turned out better than I expected. I'm definitely going to be watching it again once it leaves theaters, I think it's probably a film that benefits from multiple viewings (even in the car on the way home, my girlfriend and I were both pointing out things the other missed). If you haven't seen it, I obviously recommend that you do, it's a great movie and a great time to watch.

~ Alex Amelia Pine