Iron Lung

Bluesky

An indie-horror movie based on a videogame, written and directed by, and starring, a YouTuber. That might not augur well, but Iron Lung is a breath of fresh air. The depths it plumbs have shades of all sorts of earlier works, but a confidence and quality means that those nods don't feel like copying but echoes and reflections.

The stars are going out. Not just ours, as in Sunshine, but all of them. Project Hail Mary will try to shed light on a similar situation later this year. There might be answers on an ocean moon. That's got touches of Solaris, even before we learn that other things are missing. The sea, you see, isn't water. It's a bloody moon, wrapped in more than a bucket of blood. If it were colder then there might be ice but things are hot, dangerously so.

Mark Fischbach pilots the craft. On screen, behind the camera. Writing, adapting David Szymanski's game, he's leveraged the hands-on experience of more than a decade of streaming content into a credible piece of film-making. While he's got (at time of writing) more than 38 million subscribers, the success of his film is from more than loyal fans. For a start it costs a bit more to get to the cinema.

Careful budgeting can do much though, and Iron Lung takes the limited setting and the original's gameplay conceits for all their worth. There are several cameos from various other content creators, including some familiar faces (and voices). The score by Andrew Hulshult is well used. He's got plenty of videogame experience including later outings for the Doom series. There's a general sense that movies based on videogames aren't good, and with Return To Silent Hill in cinemas at the same time, it's hard to argue. Iron Lung is a solid and weighty rebuttal.

It's suspenseful, scary, stunning. It runs the gamut of horror, from the cosmic to the personal. Trapped in a submarine without windows, hectored by unseen voices, searching for an answer to mysteries both personal and political. Gazing into this abyss is worrying enough without anything staring back.

It is dark though, and in cinemas or other screens where saturation and contrast might be affected some of the film's power might be a little washed out. That's got much to do with the business of show. Many UK cinemas have screens with reflective coatings to support 3D, and even those that don't often don't have projectionists. Consider that a case to see this in an independent cinema. Being close enough to care is one of the places where Iron Lung shows its own quality.

If you've only got one set then you can make it a good one, and the film makes use of the classic elements and even a bit of humour. Earth, fire, air, water, blood, bile, there's even a fair bit of vitriol. Setting out a route well, each X indicates something worth treasuring. Mark this, as it's worth spotting.

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