iâve seen a lot of people talking about the pacing of iron lung, and i kinda think that people are overlooking that the pacing is the point.
movies right now are absolutely terrified of silence. every spare second is crammed with motion and noise and information. thereâs always something new to look at, something new to process. look here. now here. donât blink. donât breathe. itâs constant stimulation. thereâs no room left for a moment to land before the next one is already gone.
thereâs good sci fi horror out there that do silence and restraint well. i can immediately think of under the skin, annihilation, and ex machina. sometimes the silence is the point. personally i think iron lung works in that lineage.
this isnât a movie that will let you sit there and passively consume. this is a movie full of visual and audial clues waiting for you to unravel them. this is a movie that wants you to notice your breathing. to feel the silence press in until itâs oppressive.
isolation is the movie. itâs you alone with your thoughts, with time stretching and warping, with nothing to distract you from the constant dread creeping in. itâs not the monsters out there that youâre afraid of. not the constant drip, drip, drip of impending doom. but you, alone, in an endless sea of red.
can you count your breaths in the silence? can you hear your heart beating in your ears? can you live with yourself?
thatâs iron lung to me.
Apologies to any of my followers suddenly seeing a bunch of posts about Iron Lung the movie and going 'wtf, this came out months ago'. lol. Cosmic horror is right up my alley, so I was honestly puzzled how I missed the release, until I looked at the date. This movie dropped the weekend that half my city lost power in a massive ice storm. Some people didn't get juice back for two weeks. I was one of the lucky ones, I only froze for 4 days. (literally, temps near 0f, thank god for gas fireplace) So I didn't know anything going on in the world at large at that time. oops. :D
Anyway! Just saw it the other day, loved it, may buy it so I can watch again. Was frankly baffled afterwards by seeing posts complaining about the pacing--I thought it was just right. I was on the edge of my seat the whole 2 hrs, holding my breath during the lulls waiting for the next shit to come barreling out of the dark. It's called building suspense, & this poster explains better than I could...
the pacing is the point.
























