Iron Lung doesn’t require viewers to know the video game it has been adapted from. Everything you need to understand is either clearly explained or made horrifyingly tangible from the outset. The premise is simple: Simon (Mark Fischbach, who also wrote and directed) awakens to find himself sealed inside what is essentially a prison, one disguised as a space-age submarine.
This vessel is deployed into an oceanic world composed entirely of human blood. Sensors can barely penetrate the density of this viscous plasma. When tests confirm it is human in origin, the descent into terror truly begins. The only voices this lone pilot hears are the taunts echoing from this alien world and the transmissions from his prison handler. Ava (Caroline Rose Kaplan) serves as his sole human contact, promising a pardon for his crimes. He was implicated in the destruction of a space station, the lone captured conspirator. The absence of his fellow accomplices lingers as a narrative gap the film never fully addresses.
As Simon endures this kangaroo court of isolation, another voice emerges, something psychic, emanating from within this grotesque sphere of blood and rock. The true scale of this celestial body remains uncertain, though all evidence suggests a planet-wide ocean. Whether a singular entity resides within is left ambiguous. It communicates telepathically, beckoning this human toward some form of collective existence.
That ambiguity is where the film thrives. Even the source game refuses to offer concrete answers, and that restraint fuels the horror. Not every mystery needs illumination. Sometimes letting dread ferment in darkness is far more effective. If I were to speculate, these entities feel spiritually adjacent to the Cenobites of Hellraiser lore, not in form, but in philosophy, beings offering transcendence through suffering. Although this threat has no visible form yet, the religion surrounding it carries that same sense of cosmic dread rising to the surface.
The question of whether a single actor can carry a two-hour film hinges on sustained engagement. There are slow-burn stretches where the pacing drifts. I’ll admit there were moments I wished for a remote in hand. Yet by the third act, I was fully locked in, invested in understanding the environment surrounding this doomed explorer. He discovers a human skeleton and remnants of a lost civilization, visual confirmations that humanity has touched this abyss before.
Early in the film, narration reveals that numerous habitable worlds vanished. Whether this planetoid is the cause remains unknown, and we are not meant to understand how this Rapture began. It simply wiped out over half of humanity. Much like the MCU’s Blip, its cause remains unexplained to survivors.
The investigation undertaken by what remains of civilization echoes the existential dread found in works like Dead Space and Event Horizon. Humanity is framed less as explorers and more as cosmic decay, insignificant biological matter drifting in hostile infinity. That thematic framing becomes personal through Simon, a man shaped by a brutal upbringing, now searching for redemption at the edge of oblivion.
Both the writing and Fischbach’s performance sell this internal conflict, grounding the cosmic scale in human regret. But when Simon cannot conquer the hatred within himself, the question shifts. Does he embrace it, or transcend it? There are shades of Henry Creel before his full descent in Stranger Things. Simon stands at a similar crossroads, tempted by darkness while positioned, perhaps unwillingly, as humanity’s last line of defiance.
Viewers expecting traditional action will find little of it here. This is psychodrama first, cosmic horror second. Iron Lung is more interested in psychological suffocation than kinetic spectacle. No one is being prodded inside an Iron Maiden, despite the title’s evocative overlap. The connection feels more tonal than literal, the screams and torment echo metaphorically through Simon’s ordeal rather than physically.
By the final descent, when the crushing weight, both mechanical and existential, closes in. And to be finally crushed, well…
3½ Stars out of 5
Iron Lung Movie Trailer
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