There is less bear footage here than you might expect.
CONTENT WARNING: Violence.
All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)
CAPSULE: IRON LUNG (2026)
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DIRECTED BY: Mark Fischbach
FEATURING: Mark Fischbach
PLOT: In the far future, when humanity is dying off, a convict is sent to the bottom of an ocean of blood on a distant moon in search of… something or other.
COMMENTS: If you’ve heard the rags-to-riches DIY success story of the fan video game adaptation Iron Lung, which played in 4,160 theaters worldwide in early 2026 based purely on a grassroots campaign where fans of YouTuber-turned-feature-film-director markiplier (Mark Fischback) begged cinemas to show it on the big screen, and are wondering whether the non-initiate will enjoy this, my answer is a firm “no.” While the film is a phenomenal success story on its own terms, it was made for a narrow niche audience, and unless you’ve played the video game or count yourself among markiplier’s 38 million YouTube channel subscribers, you ain’t it.
At least 90% of Iron Lung takes place inside a cramped submarine the size of a living room, crowded with metal apparatus and sensors. Convict pilot Simon (Fischback) is alone for almost the entire film, with occasional conversations over intercoms with bad connections to break his solitude. The craft is rickety, has no portals to see the outside world (which would just be a wall of opaque red anyway), has frequent blood leaks, and lunches a lot. You get to know every sharp corner and blinking light in the sub in the film’s 2-hour runtime; you almost feel like you could pilot this tub yourself. The detailed set conveys the feeling of a metal prison, and the sound design is superlative: drips, scrapes, static, echoes, thumps, all sorts of dreadful alarming noises to remind you that you are in a tin can surrounded by certain death. Based on the editing in the climax, I think that Fischback could direct a thrilling action scene—assuming you knew who, what, and where the antagonist was and what the hell was going on.
But as impressive as the film’s technicals may be, the script is simultaneously boring and confusing. I mentioned that the film was 2 hours long, and it makes sure you feel every minute. Reports suggest the game itself can be finished in under and hour—an hour and a half if you dwaddle—so there is a lot of padding added here to convey the combination of tedium and dread the protagonist would experience. Watching the movie, you get the sense that the game is nothing but a long test of your ability to press buttons, flip switches, and turn knobs, because this mostly what Fischback does on screen. There is a part where he accidentally irradiates some of his handlers, which has no payoff. There is a tormented personal backstory delivered in monologue, meant to humanize the an anonymous explorer. But mainly, it’s Fischback flipping switches, turning knobs, and bemoaning his fate.
The mystery of this abandoned moon is where the film’s claim to weirdness comes from. The premise itself is absurd: supposedly all the stars and planets have suddenly disappeared except for a single moon with an ocean of blood. Although the technology here comes from hard science fiction, the scenario is entirely mystical. The ocean floor contains mysterious artifacts (which I won’t spoil) and something that might be an entity—or, it could all be an oxygen-deprivation hallucination. There is some body horror, some monstrous visions, a blood-soaked cosmic climax, and no clear resolution. The lack of explanations would not be a problem if we cared about the protagonist in more than a theoretical sense, but it’s hard to become engaged with the convict’s plight. We root for humanity to survive more out of a sense of general obligation to the species than because the movie has caused us to care about this particular band of plucky survivors. So, in short: play the game first. If you want more, see the movie. Don’t reverse the process.
Iron Lung is currently available for rental or purchase solely on YouTube.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by “Anonymous,” who suggested it “[h]as enough questions about what f***ed up stuff we’re seeing is real or not, and ends with one of the goriest climaxes in all of film with a battle with a sentient ocean of radioactive human blood..” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
SATURDAY SHORT: CARROTS (2011)
A carrot farmer finds his money’s no good at the local car dealership in this early Jim Hosking short.
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BACKROOMS (2026)
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DIRECTED BY: Kane Parsons
FEATURING:Renate Reinsve, Chiwetel Ejiofor,
PLOT: A frustrated furniture-store owner discovers a seemingly infinite maze of mysterious rooms in the back of his store, and invites his therapist to help explore them.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Explore the labyrinths of the unconscious in this ambiguous and terrifying psychological horror.
COMMENTS: Clark is a frustrated, divorced wannabe architect barely making ends meet at his crappy furniture store. He drinks too much and is unhappy enough that he goes to see a therapist, Mary, to vent and role-play his breakup with his wife. While investigating an electricity bill that’s much higher than it should be, Clark discovers he can pass through a wall in his basement to enter a maze of backrooms filled with odd phenomena. Mary is skeptical when he tells her of his explorations, but when he fails to show up at a weekly session, she follows him into the backrooms.
Thirty-something furniture salesmen and female psychologists do not seem like the kind of protagonists 20-year old director Kane Parsons would pick to pilot his feature debut film, but herein lies Backrooms‘ genius. Parson wisely outsourced his script to television writer Will Soodik. Soodik delivers an unexpectedly rich scenario that pries into Clark’s insecurities and Mary’s traumatic backstory without fully explaining them, leaving Parsons free to expend his youthful creativity on designing the rooms themselves. The film’s interlocking chambers feature improbable geometries, optical illusions, out-of-place objects like heaps of stacked furniture, piles of laundry, dead birds, sneakers half-submerged in the floor, and so on. The deeper we penetrate into the maze, the more surreal the objects we find—and eventually, people (of a sort) show up. Everything is built wrong, as if misremembered or imagined by an alien intelligence trying to recreate human artifacts based on a stock photo image library, with little understanding of the ways objects actually relate to each other in the physical world. The constructs recall the uncanny, too-many-fingered visions that AI regurgitated only a few years ago. How and why were these created, by whom and for what purpose? The indeterminate grotesqueness of Backrooms simulacra gives the film uncanny power; the resonance with its characters’ psychological flaws imbues it with meaning.
There are two potential pitfalls with Backrooms. The first is the expectations set by locating the film within the horror genre. Backrooms is at its best when dwelling within its own unease: it does not need (many) monsters, stalkers, jump scares, or scenes of bloodletting to liven it up. These elements do show up, but miraculously, the story survives its chase scenes, ending by circling back to its inexplicable roots. A looming issue, however, may be the audience’s insatiable thirst for “lore,” which, if improperly indulged, can lead to the biggest buzzkill of all: “explication.” Backrooms 2 probably would be—and, I strongly fear will be—a terrible idea. As a standalone work, Backrooms beautifully expands upon the promising but narrow premise of the original shorts, adding depth and forming an ambiguously closed circle. Please, don’t push your luck. At the tender age of age 20, Parsons should still have decades of completely original nightmares to dredge up from his fertile unconscious.
Audience notes: The theater was fairly full for a weekday evening showing in the expensive “Xtreme” format. There were no walkouts (with one exception I’ll mention at the end). There were more teenagers there than I expected, sitting in the front rows for an immersive experience, to boot; I should have been able to predict this knowing of Parson’s YouTube audience, but it still surprised me. One parent brought two boys, estimated ages 7-11. The younger got scared in the middle of the film (during a scene where they discover a Christmas tree in a red-lit room) and his mom had to escort him out (I don’t know if he returned later). The older boy was heard to exclaim “that was scary and weird!” when it was all over. I’m considering adoption.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: SOMEBODY GOOFED (2024)
Before becoming an award-winning documentary filmmaker, Rodney Ascher collaborated with animator Syd Garon on this Jack Chick tract brought to life as an After Effects collage in which a young man discovers he has eternally goofed by not accepting Jesus Christ.