Trailers For IRON LUNG Teases a Grim Post-Apocalyptic Submarine Horror Film
New trailers have surfaced for Iron Lung, the eerie indie sci-fi thriller from Mark Fischbach, better known to millions online as Markiplier, and it looks every bit as unsettling and intense as fans were hoping.
This project has been quietly building momentum for years, and now it’s finally surfacing with a small theatrical release locked in for early 2026.
Iron Lung marks one of the first feature films created by the massively popular YouTube creator, and it’s a stripped-down, claustrophobic sci-fi story inspired by the cult-favorite indie video game created by David Szymanski.
The story drops viewers into a bleak post-apocalyptic future where humanity is scraping by after a cosmic catastrophe known as The Quiet Rapture. Stars are gone. Habitable planets have vanished. All that’s left are rusting space stations, desperate survivors, and one horrifying discovery.
At the center of the story is a lone convict, played by Mark Fischbach, forced into a tiny submarine ominously nicknamed the Iron Lung. His mission sends him beneath the surface of an ocean made entirely of blood on a desolate moon.
The goal is survival, maybe even salvation, but the situation feels more like a death sentence than a rescue operation. The final trailer leans hard into that dread, with long stretches of isolation, mechanical groans, and the suffocating sense that something terrible is waiting in the dark depths.
The film’s cast include Caroline Rose Kaplan, Seán McLoughlin, David Szymanski, Troy Baker, Elsie Lovelock, and Isaac McKee.
The original iron lung was a medical device invented in the 1800s to assist with breathing, later inspiring early underwater diving suits developed by Phillip Drinker and Louis Shaw in 1928. That sense of confinement and dependence carries straight into the film’s core concept, turning the submarine into both a lifeline and a coffin.
Here’s the official synopsis: “Set in a post-apocalyptic future where an event known as "The Quiet Rapture" caused all known stars and habitable planets in the universe to disappear, a convict is sent to search an ocean of blood discovered on a desolate moon, using a small submarine nicknamed the "Iron Lung".
“The only hope left after The Quiet Rapture. In the rusting halls of crumbling space stations, the last remnants of humanity craft a submarine to explore the bleeding depths... and weld one soul inside to pilot it. But hope in this void is as illusionary as the starlight. This is not an expedition. It's an execution.”
The film opens in select U.S. theaters and Canada starting January 30th, 2026. It’s always cool to see a shoestring-budget indie flick swing this hard with such a grim, high-concept idea, and this one looks ready to leave viewers feeling just as trapped as its lone pilot.