"Iron Lung" (Guardian 02/02/26)

Iron Lung **

Dir: Mark Fischbach [aka Markiplier]. With: Mark Fischbach, Caroline Kaplan, Troy Baker, Elsie Lovelock. 127 mins. Cert: 15

Things change, even as William Goldman’s old showbiz maxim continues to apply: nobody still knows anything. The surprise hit of the past weekend wasn’t the much-trumpeted Melania, but a different type of horror movie: the independently financed Iron Lung, smuggled without the usual promotional hoopla into multiplexes, where it was keenly awaited by the massed followers of its Hawaiian writer-director-star Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTube gaming legend Markiplier. Most of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online. Fischbach’s film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral: it feels not unlike spending twelve hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.

Though Markiplier’s approaching the genre from a notionally fresh angle – in adapting Dave Szymanski’s titular space-submarine sim – he lands on the narratively rusty idea of an astronaut straying beyond his depth: it’s 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, either stumped by or oblivious to the film’s fundamental issues.

Hopes of discovering a new Dark Star are soon sunk by the depressive tone, leaden pacing and near-total absence of spectacle; a radio-play script insistently has to tell, because this barebones production has nothing much to show. (The achievement, chiefly entrepreneurial, is almost admirably perverse: Markiplier has steered folks towards content that makes Solaris seem like Con Air.) Even if it takes major 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 here to convert a short’s worth of plot into a beneficial feature. At least Mr. Beast’s stunts get him some occasional fresh air.

Iron Lung is now playing in cinemas nationwide.