Several YouTube creators have taken a foray into the art of film but none in recent memory stand out more artistically than Markiplier’s Iron Lung. This ambitious project is Markiplier’s, also known as Mark Edward Fishbach, first feature film after making a series of choose-your-own-adventure films on YouTube.
The source material is an hour and a half long game produced by indie game developer David Szymanski, meant to be enjoyed as a single, sitdown cohesive experience.
The game itself all takes place within one environment, a sealed submarine, on a deserted moon referred to as AT-5, in an ocean of blood after an event known as “the Quiet Rapture” has taken place.
You, the protagonist, are a prisoner sentenced to death, being forced to explore the isolated depths of this deserted moon armed with a miniscule submarine and a single, grainy camera. The vessel you pilot has no windows as they would break due to the pressure of the depths so the only way you are able to navigate is by using the camera to take single snapshots of the outside.
“If there still is hope, it lies beyond the veil. Hope in this void is as illusionary as the starlight. I will choose to breathe my last here at the bottom of an ocean, unseen, unheard, uncontrolled. They will get their execution. I will get my freedom.”
The Quiet Rapture was the random mysterious disappearance of every habitable planet, moon, and star. All this leaves behind is a series of moons and planets that are utterly uninhabitable.
Humanity, desperate for resources that are ever dwindling have resorted to mounting suicide missions to different planets and moons in a seemingly fruitless attempt to find something that can prolong their existence.
Both the game and the film are proficient in two areas, hopelessness and claustrophobia. In the film the unnamed prisoner is now called Simon, who is played by Mark himself. He elected to double up in both the acting and directing roles, a choice that many have criticized as Mark is much in the infancy of his acting career.
The feeling of despair is made excruciatingly apparent by the soundtrack created by composer Andrew Hulshult. The sound design for the film has a weight and depth given to it by the environment itself, further accentuating the depravity of the situation.
Simon does have human interaction in the form of an unnamed voice on the loudspeaker built into the ship but this gets turned against him as the creatures of the depths begin to speak through that same loudspeaker, even after he has broken it.
All together Iron Lung is a pillar that you don’t have to work with massive production companies to see your creative vision come to fruition. The entire film only having a budget of 3 million dollars grossed 40.8 million in the box office in the U.S. and Canada.
All together I would give this film a rating of 75% as Mark’s acting is a little unpolished at points but he is able to tell a story that despite being coated in despair has a surprisingly optimistic ending.
