Iron Lung - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I will freely admit that I was not the target audience for this movie. One of it's biggest promotional points was that it was made by a YouTuber who I guess is pretty well known. I do not know them. I'm pretty sure I'm not in their target audience. Another promotional point is that it's not a big studio movie. Again, nothing I care about.

The premise here is that they're on an alien planet, they need to get something that's under the blood-water to escape/survive, and they're using convicts to do it since they're expendable. The convict is welded into the submarine and sent to coordinates. I guess the enclosed submarine is the Iron Lung the movie title references.

I'm going to say that the sound mix on this was not good. I found it difficult to hear things that were happening. This may have been a deliberate choice to make the movie itself more immersive. I found it annoying.

The controls on the submarine are basic. He's got a button he can push to get a radar-type image of what's outside. He's got a hand drawn map of where he's supposed to go. And they're not telling him that he's going to get back before his oxygen runs out. So there's your suspense thing.

I'll summarize a lot here because it's not very interesting. He finds another ship, comes back to the surface for reasons, they tell him to go back and download the computer to his, and send him off again. They don't top off his oxygen. Go figure.

The movie has him getting progressively more delusional, or not, as he goes. He's off the hand drawn map as he tries to find the ship. He's seeing things with big teeth moving around - in one radar image then gone. There's leaks in the ship so there's "blood" dripping into it. He starts hearing things.

His history is brought up as he's talking to himself and the person on the radio. He's not the bad guy. He was trying to help in a situation and he's the one who got caught. Of course he's not the bad guy. He's the YouTuber guy so he's not going to be a bad guy. He's part of a movement that was going to do something bad, he tried to stop, and got caught. He's good! This is stressed so much that it got annoying to me.

More blood is leaking in. It's making growths on the inside of the ship. It's getting to him. His skin is turning. He's trying to get somewhere he can deliver the hard drive/black box with the ship computer download before he runs out of oxygen.

The thing ends with him being overcome by the blood-water stuff and changing into something they never show. He does get the hard drive/black box wrapped in a life jacket and off the ship. That's the end. We don't know if the people who sent him down find it. Two hours of watching more and more blood-water fill the ship, him talking to himself, and no resolution.

I'm happy that there's an audience for it and he's making a lot of money. I'm happy that a movie without a big studio presence got a wide release and is making a lot of money. I don't like the movie and hope never to see anything he makes ever again.