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William Goldman’s old showbiz maxim continues to apply that nobody knows anything. Independently financed horror movie Iron Lung has been smuggled into multiplexes without the usual promotional hoopla, where it was keenly awaited by the massed followers of its Hawaiian writer-director-star Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTube gaming legend Markiplier. Many of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online and Fischbach’s film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral; it feels not unlike spending 12 hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.
Though Markiplier is approaching the horror genre from a notionally fresh angle – by adapting Dave Szymanski’s eponymous space-submarine sim – he lands on the narratively rusty idea of an astronaut straying beyond his depth; this is Moon in dimmer light. Beset by ominous rumbles and mounting doubts about the state of mankind, the begrimed and squalid craft singlehandedly piloted by Fischbach’s straggle-haired convict Simon is indistinguishable from the average teenage bedroom. Our hero staggers round this intergalactic deathtrap completing vaguely specified missions – ram this, repair that, download something or other – like a harassed dad ticking off his Sunday to-do list. In this, Simon proves more proficient than Fischbach’s offscreen self, who is either stumped by or oblivious to the film’s fundamental issues.
Hopes that Iron Lung is a new Dark Star are soon sunk by the depressive tone, leaden pacing and near-total absence of spectacle; this is basically a radio-play script that insistently has to tell, because this barebones production has nothing much to show. (The achievement, chiefly entrepreneurial, is almost admirably perverse: Markiplier steering people towards content that makes Solaris seem like Con Air.) Even if you have a major case of Main Character Syndrome to centre yourself for two-plus hours while relegating your co-stars to voices off, Fischbach holds steady before the camera; more money and bigger sets will doubtless come his way. But he can’t pull off the dramatic heavy lifting required to convert a short film’s worth of plot into a watchable feature. At least MrBeast’s stunts get him outside.
English (US) ·