Iron Lung Review: Claustrophobic Dread Powered by Audience Freedom

Isolation and unease take hold deep beneath a blood-filled ocean in Iron Lung.

Iron Lung Review — Dread by Design, Freedom by Audience

Rating: 2.5 / 5

There’s something undeniable about the risk Mark Fischbach took with Iron Lung. Not just adapting a dread-soaked indie horror game, but putting it in theaters, on his own terms, for an audience that followed him there willingly. Whether you know him as Markiplier or not—and I didn’t going in—this film exists because of a very modern truth: if you build a crowd, you buy yourself creative freedom.

That part? Respect.

Directed by and starring Mark Fischbach, Iron Lung drops you into a grim, claustrophobic sci-fi horror setup that feels intentionally stripped down. Fischbach plays Simon, a convict offered a chance at a reduced sentence if he agrees to descend into a blood-filled alien ocean aboard a rickety submarine ominously dubbed the Iron Lung. His task is simple on paper: navigate, document, retrieve. The reality, of course, is anything but.

Watching the film, it often feels less like a traditional movie and more like actively playing an indie PC horror game—and I mean that both as praise and critique. The isolation is overwhelming. The sound design does a lot of the heavy lifting. And the film understands dread: not the flashy kind, but the slow, suffocating anxiety that creeps in when you realize escape isn’t really an option.

To Fischbach’s credit, there are smart choices made to prevent the film from becoming too static. A few added elements help break the monotony just enough to keep the pacing structured, even if the environment never really changes. And yes—this was clearly the goal. The film lands exactly where it intends to land.

But intention doesn’t always equal engagement.

As someone unfamiliar with the game and the YouTube ecosystem surrounding it, the story itself never fully grabbed me. You understand very early what the film is doing, where it’s headed, and what emotional notes it plans to hit. There aren’t many surprises on the surface, and nothing drastically shifts the trajectory once the rules of this world are established.

Fans of the game will no doubt pick up on Easter eggs, nods, and deeper lore. For outsiders, those layers don’t really register. What remains is a competent, atmosphere-driven experience that values mood over narrative momentum.

Fischbach, as a performer, is better than expected. He’s not a liability on screen, and he understands restraint—an important quality in a film this minimal. And honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just the beginning. With the resources he has and the audience willing to follow him, it feels inevitable that he’ll continue exploring horror—whether within Iron Lung’s universe or beyond it.

That’s kind of the takeaway here.

Iron Lung isn’t a failure. It’s a statement. It’s proof of concept. It’s chaos for the industry in the best way—a reminder that you don’t need permission anymore. If you’ve got the audience and the capital, you can just… go do the thing.

I didn’t love the film, but I respect what it represents.

And that counts for something.