#tropetastic

I’ll start off with a list of trigger warnings that I haven’t seen anyone else give yet;

Emetophobia: there’s a couple scenes where a character vomits up blood and there are lots of retching sounds

Hemophobia: this one’s fairly obvious, but there is a lot of blood

Seizure warning: a couple scenes have flashing/flickering lights, although these aren’t your typical unnecessary strobe lights, thank God

Existentialism: there’s a bit more of this than I expected, so if you’re prone to existential dread just be aware of that <3

Body horror: there’s also a few scenes of very graphic injury/mutilation. A character has to pull their own arm off and there is bone and gore visible afterwards.

Okay, now for my review~

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First off I thought it was interesting that there seemed to be a few parallels with Mark’s playthrough of the game version of Iron Lung - there’s a scene where Simon/the convict looks at the map and says “oh, I was way off”, and I’m pretty sure Mark said the same thing in his original playthrough

I was NOT expecting it to not be a complete 1:1 copy of the game, although thinking back I’m not sure why I thought that it would be - although (and major spoilers for this bit so skip the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want that), I now have a theory that the destroyed sub Simon finds from the previous dive attempt was meant to be the player’s sub from the game 🤔 (or maybe I’m totally wrong, just a theory. A GAME THE- *gunshots*)

Mark’s portrayal of a person in deep distress will never fail to amaze me. I’ve seen a theory floating around that some of the things Simon experienced were due to radiation or oxygen deficiency, but I honestly think there’s a personal psychosis aspect of it too. Simon is experiencing levels of terror that no human being should ever have to face, it makes total sense to me that his mind would start to fracture eventually, even without the “fish” (it ain’t a fucking fish) messing with him. Fr, every time Simon started to cry or breathe heavily with panic, I could feel that emotion through the screen. Every time he shouted or slumped to the floor in defeat, I could feel the emotion. It could just be because I’m used to relating to Mark on an emotional level, but I honestly feel it’s something more than that - even without all the background information on Simon’s past, as the movie progressed I could just *tell* he was haunted by something, and that something was a massive component of how he was feeling in the sub.

I love, love, LOVE the trope of a person being faced with something beyond comprehension and just going “FUCK YOU” and fighting back as much as possible - and Iron Lung delivers on that! So often when a sci fi story involves finding something so far above humanity, that’s the moment where characters give up and feel there’s no use fighting it, they just fall into despair. Not our Simon. No, he looks this monstrosity right in the eye and decides he’s still going to at least try to get himself out of there alive, and he’ll step on as many eldrich entities’ backs as he has to to do it.

I also like when a movie is a little open-ended, and once again, Iron Lung delivers - there’s plenty of things that are hinted at that don’t get solved, and even the ending itself leaves things a little up in the air. Some people find that annoying, but I like it a lot - as a writer myself, it gives my imagination room to speculate and play with things a little, to try and dream up what happens next, sometimes it’s way more fun to not get all the answers, and Iron Lung perfectly toes the line between being too vague and confusing and force-feeding way too much information to the audience - something a lot of films don’t manage to do nowadays.

The people complaining about the pacing need to sit down and shut up. There’s nothing wrong with the pacing whatsoever. The dramatic beats are perfect, the suspense is kept throughout the whole film without needless violence/action. The detail shots (such as Simon wiping the drop of blood that fell on his hand onto his pants) just add to the depth of the film so much, it’s all symbolism, it’s a warning of what’s to come, the shots are so long and specific because they’re meant to imprint themselves in your mind. And they do. I wasn’t once bored during the entire two hours, I was so utterly captivated by it all that I didn’t want to look away for a second in case I missed an important detail.

(This is another paragraph to skip if you don’t want spoilers). I also wanna talk about the creature/entity thing in general. It refers to itself as a “god”, but there’s a part of me that feels it’s not quite that simple. Clearly it has something to do with the Quiet Rapture, or it at least has insight as to what caused it. My own personal theory is that the ocean of blood isn’t just an ocean, it’s an entire living organism in and of itself - which is somewhat evidenced by the scene were Simon hallucinates that the ocean is grabbing onto the little tree charm on his wrist and trying to pull it off, and when he looks down there’s a tangle of what looks like veins within the blood wrapped around it. If anyone here is familiar with Isaac Asimov, specifically the short story Green Patches (originally published as Misbegotten Missionary), this is a story that explores the concept of a planet where every living thing is connected to a hivemind of sorts. These aliens, although seemingly primitive, feel pity for humans and other Earth animals, seeing them as detached from each other and lonely in their struggle for survival against one another. I bring this up because I feel that the blood ocean in Iron Lung is a similar type of entity. It is ancient and highly intelligent, despite just looking like a big ocean of bodily fluid, and it holds deep knowledge of the universe within its depths. It looks at humanity, as advanced as they are, and has decided their minds are too fragile to understand what is happening to the universe - and maybe it’s right. To us it seems like its actions are evil, as if it’s tormenting Simon like a cat playing with a mouse before killing it, but to the entity itself it may feel as if it’s doing an act of mercy, trying to spare humanity at large from the true horror of the universe’s existence (“it’s bigger than you, it’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than all of us” <- the line isn’t said by the entity itself, but it makes a damn fine parallel when you look at the story this way), and not understanding that taking one human life is more serious to humanity than it is to the entity’s hivemind.

I was also pleasently surprised by the fact that the enormous amounts of blood didn’t show up until quite late in the movie - pleasantly surprised because I appreciate the restraint, and not going full-ham on the gushing blood flooding the ship until the movie’s climax - once again, people might complain that the lack of lots of blood in the Blood Ocean Movie made it boring, but they can kindly put a sock in it, because they know nothing about pacing.

As for my own personal experience with the movie, I could tell that everyone in the theatre was just as enraptured as me and my friend. It was also more crowded than I was expecting being such a late showing after the initial release, I’m glad I booked our seats when I did because the theatre filled up fast once we were in there. I will admit that close to the end my alarm to take my meds went off and that kinda killed the vibe a little (and for that I apologize 😅), what makes it worse is that my alarm is By The Seaside, so imagine the most climactic moment in a movie interrupted briefly by “🎶 do do do- 🎶” and then someone frantically whispering “sorry!” - I’m sure the whole theatre didn’t hear it but I still felt kinda bad about it. That didn’t dilute the experience of the ending that badly tho. As soon as the movie ended, people clapped - everyone clapped. It was a magical experience. I was thoroughly exhausted (but not in a bad way) by the time I got home and went straight to bed, which is why I’m sharing my thoughts this morning.