"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;"
"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."
"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.)"
Iron Lung is an independently financed horror film secretly screened in multiplexes that leverages Mark Fischbach's large YouTube following. The film adapts Dave Szymanski's space-submarine game and centers on a lone convict-astronaut, Simon, piloting a claustrophobic, shabby craft that resembles a teenage bedroom. The narrative recycles the familiar astronaut-isolated trope and proceeds with depressive tone, slow pacing, and minimal visual spectacle. The film emphasizes dialogue and implied action over cinematic showmanship, feeling more like an audio drama forced to explain events. The chief achievement is entrepreneurial rather than artistic, relying on fandom to draw audiences despite clear production limitations.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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