Little Things I Love in Iron Lung (2026): Part One
i have +400 2160p screencaps and it's gonna be y'all problem. Here, I'm gonna focus on the technical shit. I'll do another post later about #JustSimonThings that I adore.
spoilers for the entire movie
one: cool recurring camera trick the first - reflections in Simon's eyes
This was the first time I noticed it. It's SO sexy. These ultra-close-ups are consistently used to show what Simon's looking at via the reflection in his eyes. I've seen this trick before obviously, but with the inherent claustrophobia of both the Iron Lung itself as well as the "maybe-eldritch-maybe-advanced-radiation-poisoning" paranoia of being so close inside Simon's mind-- both are enhanced by them using Simon's eyes less like windows to the soul and more like mirrors, informing us of exactly what he's thinking.
The shitty compass on the console and the proximity light around it.
After the crash, the only source of light being the camera button.
oh yeah I hear you already. "but arc, almost every bad review about this movie is about how slow it is, especially before the climax." Well, this is just my opinion but I think Iron Lung is not slow, people are just impatient.
fun fact: one of my favorite genres is the sort of Ensemble Cast Action Drama genre. you know, Those Movies, like Hotel Artemis and Bullet Train and Cocaine Bear and half of Guy Ritchie's movies, where there are enough characters who all have their own motivations and sideplots that there's almost no "main" plot.
Of that subgenre, one of my favorites is Bad Times at the El Royale. In an overcrowded field, it stands out specifically because it is willing to slow down. Cinema lately is so concerned with audience attention span, they have metrics for how often important shit needs to happen or its assumed the Content Consumer will get bored. So when El Royale has a nerve-wracking, uncomfortable, long oner in the first part of the movie and reveled in leaving the viewer to sit and stew a while, it had my heart.
Iron Lung lives in that space. It lets the camera run, leaves the audience trapped in this duct taped monstrosity. But also, there's not a wasted shot.
If we're in a "blood ocean" why is water dripping off everything in here?
Why is the button for the forward-facing camera on the back wall and the screen to display the image is to the left of the button when this forces Simon to turn his back on whatever is in front of him?
(The fact there's a textual reason for this is honestly cool as shit.)
Why does the shot slide down to linger on Simon's wrists after he finds the sprout talisman stashed away?
(It's literally his, the broken ring on his bracelet was where the talisman was before all this, someone returned his sprout, who and how and why?)
OKAY MAYBE MY FAVORITE, whaaaaat the fuck was that, what is blocking the light while Simon's in the crawlspace oh gdddd?
(It's the fucking tape he put over the button falling off and as it does, it looks like someone is in the ship moving around but It's the fucking TAPE.)
Why is there an uninterrupted 50-second shot of Simon sitting as the Iron Lung is lifted out of the ocean?
(This moment establishes so much about Simon, how he gets overwhelmed by all the announcements, how he starts doing recovery breathing to keep from freaking out, the fact he's just been yanked out of prison and knows how to do recovery breathing, how much conscious and constant effort goes into keeping himself calm.)
three: cool camera trick the second - many flavors of claustrophobia
Off the dome, I can tell you there's a few ways to generate the feeling of claustrophobia, and IL uses two of them that at first seem to be diametric opposites.
One is this recurring shot set-up.
Since the Iron Lung was built and existed in actual space, I imagine they took the opportunity to make many panels fully removable to facilitate camera operation.
The film comes back to the narrow gap between the port and starboard walls and the pipes, and it's a fabulous little bit. By letting foreground obstructions cut off so much of the frame, it's like an artificial Panavision 27.5:1 aspect ratio-- ultra wide and ultra short.
This enhances the claustrophobia in the first way: putting the subject character alone in a overly wide shot, as wide as you can get without invoking fisheye effect. This simultaneously crams a lot of the setting into the shot and also makes the character look small within it.
Interestingly, the opposite method of conveying claustrophobia is IL's beloved ultra-close-ups. This is both close-ups on Simon and those uncomfortable moments when the camera finds a tiny detail of the Iron Lung and sits on it for way too long.
This is a disorientation trick. By keeping the focal length close and throwing everything else out of focus, you can purposefully make it more difficult for the audience to tell where they are. It's not a coincidence when Simon is going mad from the paranoia/blood ocean bullshit/advanced radiation poisoning, that's when we get the most of the ultra-close-ups and cause-and-effect start to get desynced to make the whole place feel more unstable.
So what I'm saying is: claustrophobia through wide shots w/ too much clarity and through close-ups w/ way too little clarity. It's cool how both work!
there are so many examples, some of them v obvious, some of them subtle, and i love them all
FIVE: THEY BUILT THIS THING ON A HYDRAULIC RIG
yes i genuinely think it's super cool that they built this thing and it was so mobile they were able to buck and throw Mark around inside it pretty realistically, I love when an actor decides the only way to make a movie right is if they get bruised to shit doing it
but what I really love is the more mundane bits, where the Iron Lung is tilted at an awkward angle and Simon has to work to move properly. When he moves too quickly and has to correct a bit, but also:
This scene. The ship is on such an incline that when Simon gets up to hit the camera, he's almost falling and catching himself with his hand on the button, then has to grab onto the edge of the screen to stay upright, then has to lean all the way forward as he trudges back up the incline to the console.
Mark Fischbach, I understand the vision, man. Sorry I never watch your youtube channel dude. If you make another movie tho, I'll probably watch that.
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