like a movie Iron lungs it’s exciting at times, but mostly forgettable. It’s a low-budget horror film that takes some great ideas and pulls them off in an extremely effective way, creating a sense of tension that unfortunately never turns into full-on terror. But the most important thing about it is what it represents. At a time when cinemas are dominated by the biggest blockbusters and smaller films try to make their own way, Iron lungs managed to make over $20 million at the box office without the backing of a major studio. All it took was a big help from YouTube.
Circumstances around Iron lungs not exactly easy to replicate. It is an adaptation of the 2022 indie horror game developed by solo creator David Szymanski and is written, directed and executive produced by Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTube star Markiplier. Markiplier is best known for his let’s play videos of indie horror games and has built a surprisingly huge following with almost 40 million subscribers on YouTube. Three years ago, Markiplier published a game that was viewed more than 14 million times. In 2022, Szymanski joked about Markiplier in the lead role Iron lungs movie, the trailer dropped a year later, and now the final product is in theaters as Markiplier’s first feature. In addition to being the creative director behind the film, Markiplier is also the lead star, a remarkable feat for a film that mostly features a single person in front of the camera.
The premise of the film is quite off: In a bleak future, a convict (Markiplier) is welded into an experimental submarine as punishment for his crimes. He is tasked with exploring the moon’s ocean in search of… something. Oh, and that ocean is made entirely of blood, too. Survive and he will be free. The convict cannot see outside the submarine except by using an underwater camera that captures low-resolution images of the deep (bloody) sea. So the viewing experience Iron lungs he mostly watches Markiplier cursing, mumbling, and flicking switches while constantly freaking out at being trapped in such a hellish landscape. The film manages to squeeze a surprising amount of tension out of this format early on, but as the story progresses it really starts to drag and get repetitive. One of the highlights is the drawn-out sequence of him drawing the map.
Iron lungs is very clearly based on a video game. It uses so many of the same concepts: a guide character who is mostly just a voice over a speaker; diegetic narrative elements such as instruction manuals and large displays that reveal how deep the submarine is and how much oxygen is left; audio recordings that reveal important plot details; and upgrade the device in the middle. Its cast even includes Troy Baker, the voice actor behind seemingly every video game of the last decade. All of these elements can work really well in the context of an interactive video game, but they feel a lot clumsier in a live action movie. That means as the first feature film Iron lungs it shows a lot of promise, though it never quite comes together in the end.
in spite of Iron lungs is an unqualified success. She reportedly had a budget of just $3 million and accordingly Period it finished second at the US box office over the weekend, grossing $18 million, a number that has since surpassed $20 million worldwide. That put him just behind Sam Raimi Send helpa 20th Century Studios production, and well ahead of Amazon’s very expensive Melania Trump documentary.
The successful transition of YouTubers to other creative spheres is not a new phenomenon, not even in Hollywood. Brothers Danny and Michael Philippou have made the jump from YouTube and released two excellent horror films talk to me and Bring her backwhich both made tens of millions. But these films also had a studio (and money) behind the name A24, while Iron lungs is a much more general matter. Markiplier used his ardent fan base to approach theaters directly, which eventually resulted in the film being released on over 3,000 screens despite not having a distributor. He was able to turn one kind of popularity into a breakout hit in a completely different medium.
“There were just so many people asking (theatre chains to show it),” he said Tea The Hollywood Reporter. “There were enough people asking that people thought they were robots. At that scale, it’s hard for others to imagine so many people asking them.” In the same interview, he said there was “still a stigma against YouTube” and he wanted to Iron lungs be partially successful in helping overcome this barrier.
While this may help other big-name creators looking to make it to film, it’s not an easy formula for filmmakers or studios to replicate. Aspiring horror filmmakers can’t first amass an audience of millions on YouTube to help their projects take off, and there’s a huge difference between running a channel and creating a blockbuster.
But Iron lungs the story shows the power of existing audiences and how the scale of online success has now reached the point where it can disrupt even the most established institutions like Hollywood and directly compete with the likes of Disney and Amazon. And with other hits like Iron lungsthat stigma will continue to disappear – and theaters may not look the same.