A bloody horror experience trapped in a small sub
Directed by: Mark Fischbach
Written by: Mark Fischbach
Starring: Mark Fischbach, Caroline Kaplan, Troy Baker
Rated R for language, bloody images, and some gore
Release Date: January 30, 2026
Runtime: 2:07
This review may contain spoilers
Horror video game movies get a bad rep
Movies based on horror video games are nothing new. 14 years ago, Paul Anderson was making those god-awful Resident Evil movies. Uwe Boll tried his hand with Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead; those were laughably worse. Silent Hill and Doom, sucked and sucked. Recently, there’s Until Dawn and a new Silent Hill. Haven’t seen those but heard Return to Silent Hill sucked baaad!
Now comes a film based on an indie horror game, with a YouTuber financing and filming the whole thing himself.
“This isn’t an expedition…”
The film seals in convict Simon into a submersible nicknamed the “Iron Lung” to explore an ocean comprised entirely of blood (fuckin’ metal!). Simon’s mission is… take a bunch of pictures. He finds some spooky stuff, his handlers want samples of the spooky stuff, and a giant, toothy fish creature decides he would be a snack.
Photo Credit: Markiplier Studios
Yeah, it gets weird, and that’s before the hallucinations happen.
From streaming to the big screen
Since Mark Fischbach goes primarily by his online name Markiplier, including in the movie credits, I’m gonna stick to calling him by that. Hell, I sign my reviews as The Kaiz. I see it as mutual online respect, except he has a very popular YouTube channel, and I have a movie blog site.
We are so not the same…
Markiplier self-financed this whole movie himself. No big producers or companies. He’s even working on the financing for home video distribution and streaming. This movie is through and through a game fan’s vision. It’s impressive.
Not many movies can pull off having someone stuck in one place and still keeping the audience interested. I think keeping the mystery of what’s out there going on helped. Even when you’re seeing what Markiplier is seeing (via grainy X-Ray shots), you’re still not sure what’s really going on. Is that the structure of a lost civilization, a skeleton of some strange creature able to survive swimming in blood, or is it just a friggin’ rock? Hell, I have a hard enough time recognizing the contents of my bags going through airport security. There’s never a clear explanation of the pictures he’s taking, so trying to decipher the pictures yourself adds a fun, puzzled immersion.
What is Iron Lung?
I appreciate that I didn’t need to know the game to follow the movie. I never even heard of this game before the movie. It covers the main points: sitting inside a sub the whole time (check), ocean of blood (check), and spooky things with little explanations (check).
Never played the game personally, but Markiplier was really dedicated to making this film, even turning down a role for Five Nights at Freddy’s.
For a fun time, here’s a link to the film’s Markiplier playing the game on his YouTube channel.
BLOOD!
Markiplier’s first movie also broke a movie record – using 80,000 gallons of movie blood, beating 2013’s Evil Dead’s 50,000 gallons. Makes sense when your character is gonna be submerged in an ocean of blood for an hour and a half.
We all live in an iron submarine
Being Markiplier’s first film, it has its flaws in storytelling and editing, but quite honestly, it’s easy to ignore or forgive when the horror experience is damn good. It’s creepy and spooky, and little is explained to keep you wondering just what the hell is going on. It’s a refreshing entry to the horror lineup and a promising start for horror indie movies. It also sparks my curiosity about the game itself.
Iron Lung is currently playing in theaters.
