{"id":63231,"date":"2026-02-02T15:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=63231"},"modified":"2026-02-02T15:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:07:09","slug":"iron-lung-what-a-very-good-very-weird-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2026\/02\/02\/iron-lung-what-a-very-good-very-weird-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Iron Lung: What A Very Good, Very Weird Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Movies like this don’t generally get to exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sorry — to rewind here a bit, I saw Iron Lung<\/strong>, the (very indie) Markiplier movie that adapts the David Szymanski game of the same name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To rewind further, do you know who Markiplier is? If you have a teenager or are in any way interested in video games, you probably do — I guess you’d call him a YouTuber, which is accurate but also just feels too small. You could go with “content creator” but that also sucks, because content<\/em> is just such a fucked-up AI barf word these days, as if anything created ever is just a starchy gruel lump you can shove into your brainmouth to give it something to chew on for a while. Mostly, I think of him as a very funny, very creative, and very popular dude-who-makes-videos. I don’t know that I’m a fan<\/em> in the sense of weeping and shrieking and swooning dizzily as the Beatles come on stage<\/em>, but my kiddo watches him, and so I started watching him, and he’s good stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(He’s also a killer comedian, by the way — his Supermarket Simulator videos<\/a> make me laugh heartily. I guffaw even! Guffaw<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OKAY GOOD YES ANYWAY<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He made a movie based on a video game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And to go back to the fore of the post, it’s the kind of movie that doesn’t really get to exist any more, and I hope — nay, I pray to whatever heretic gods I can find in the gurgling crimson mess of the blood sea<\/em> — that more get to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a flawed, fucked-up little sci-fi-horror movie about a convict welded into a primitive submarine, flung into an ocean of literal blood<\/em> on some distant moon, and then asked to search blindly<\/em> in the crimson deep for Something Mysterious while also being hunted<\/em> by Something Mysterious. There’s patchy backstory and staticky communication and — I dunno what the fuck is going on. Ghosts? Some kind of apocalypse? A plague? A blood god? Again: I really don’t know. I could not tell you what the fuck I just watched. And I really like that I could not tell you what the fuck I just watched. It brings this fascinating vibe of something… Lynchian, paired with the claustrophic (and bloody) early work of Sam Raimi. A little bit Eraserhead, a little bit Evil Dead. A soup\u00e7on of Event Horizon, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(This is actually somewhat ironic then that Iron Lung was up against a Sam Raimi movie at the box office, duking it out.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(And Iron Lung won that battle on Friday, and almost won the weekend.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(And<\/em> Iron Lung kicked the everloving shit out of Melania, thus proving that, in fact, there may be a god. Or gods. Or a sentient blood ocean. I dunno.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway. Here’s the thing — I just feel like, for the most part, movies and even television shows have to kind of be One Specific Thing now. Everything genre is Marvel Star Wars Stranger Things, and non-genre is probably something a little more high-minded than that, and it’s not that I hate any of these things. I don’t. I’m a basic bish a lot of times. I am not a fancy man. But while I may like and appreciate these things, I also really, really like weird-ass shit<\/em>, shit that doesn’t belong, shit that doesn’t make sense, just some real head-fuckery, and I think this film is exactly that, and I am glad it exists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, is it flawed? Sure. It’s pace is off. It runs too long. Sometimes it vibes a bit much like “a guy who plays video games for a living is now starring as a guy inside a video game.” But then it reaches for these big weird gross moments, and it gets them. Markiplier has real directing chops in this — some stunning visuals and truly twitchy moments are present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in a world where we learn again and again that streamers want shows and movies where the plot is explained three or four times throughout<\/a> to keep people who are looking at their phones from clicking elsewhere — <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it’s mighty fucking refreshing to get a movie that does not give one hot little rabbit shit about that. You’re just like the convict in the movie — welded into a box for two hours, given little clue or context, good luck, it’s gonna get weird down there in the blood-dark tides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I dunno — see it. It’s weird. It’s neat. I’m gonna find and play the game. I hope more movies like this get to exist. I hope more Markiplier movies get to exist. This feels truly independent — and, when you learn how he made the damn thing, and <\/em>how his community supported him<\/a>, you’ll see just how independent this was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MORE WEIRD-ASS INDIE MOVIES, please and thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, if someone could please let Markiplier make an Inscryption movie, that’d be lovely. *pushes money into defunct CD-ROM drive I have nearby*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Oh and speaking of weird little indie horror movies, if you haven’t seen I SAW THE TV GLOW<\/a>, that’s another. So. Yeah. Go see it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OKAY BYE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Movies like this don’t generally get to exist. Sorry — to rewind here a bit, I saw Iron Lung, the (very indie) Markiplier movie that adapts the David Szymanski game of the same name. To rewind further, do you know who Markiplier is? If you have a teenager or are in any way interested in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-63231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-theramble","9":"has-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2250452154-1400x825-1.jpg?fit=1400%2C825&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-grR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63231"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63235,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63231\/revisions\/63235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}