Hallucinations and Foreshadowing--the SM-8 and the Blood Eel
Towards the the end of Iron Lung, Simon is hallucinating and coughing up blood, and really just not in good shape. At timecode 1:42:17, he takes a picture that looks like the blood eel on its side with all its teeth just absolutely barred.
We get this amazing camera work with his head tilting to the side as he tries to understand what he is seeing.
Then Simon takes the photo again, and it is now clearly the remains of the SM-8.
When you look at the two pictures side by side, there is a lot of visual overlap.
Look at the broken metal in the picture on the right and how it is so similar to the teeth of the monster in the left picture. The darker, negative space on the left of both pictures is very deliberately made to look much the same.
What we have here is really clever visual storytelling and foreshadowing. Simon sees the SM-8 submarine as a monster for a moment, which allows us to understand how damaged and ill he is. Especially when juxtaposed with the shot of his head tilting mechanically to the side, we're getting a good idea of the visual distortions he is seeing.
But we also get foreshadowing of the SM-13 turning into a monstrous thing that attacks him later on. The eel screams at him that "Your ship is alive, and it will never let you go!" These two photos give us a hint of that eventually happening. (It can also be foreshadowing the SM-14 being destroyed by the eel shortly after this when Ava comes down in a failed attempt to rescue Simon. I find that less convincing, but it is food for thought. And, of course, it can be foreshadowing of the SM-13 meeting this same fate once the eel gets hold of him.)
This paired with the fact that the SM-13--and we can assume the SM-8 since they were able to repurpose its instruction manual for the SM-13--was designed to have attributes like the eel including vents on the side like gills, and broken metal near the porthole reminiscent of teeth, is smart, carefully conceived movie magic. The submarine is just as dangerous to him as the eel when you pull back and look at the scenario, which makes it fitting for it to have this design.
You can read about those design choices on Molly Brown's website, Deadlymelodic. It's very worth looking at. She's insanely talented.
There are so many instances of wonderful visual storytelling in Iron Lung, and every time I take a look at it, I see something new to appreciate. I can't believe how terribly clever these two photos are. It could have been handled in an abrupt, cliche jump scare like in many horror movies. Those scenes where there is a shadowy figure in the room, then lightning flashes and it's just a coatrack, something like that. But Markiplier gave us this scene with subtle terror and none of that dreck. Big preesh, big preesh.
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