Iron Lung movie leans into mystery rather than answers
David Szymanski’s Iron Lung packs vast, cosmic questions into a deliberately small game, and Mark Fischbach’s surprise-hit film adaptation deepens those puzzles rather than answering them. Rather than resolve the game’s lingering mysteries, the movie makes them stranger, a choice that will frustrate some viewers and delight others — particularly the internet-era fans the project seems aimed at.
The game’s premise is stark: a condemned convict sealed into a tiny submarine must pilot across a sea of blood on a mysterious moon, sending back images from a single external camera. Playthroughs are short and abrupt, and Szymanski’s setting hints at a far larger catastrophe — the Quiet Rapture, when “every known star” and every inhabited world disappeared — without explaining it.