IRON LUNG

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film opens with the voice of someone known as “The Father” (David Pettit) referring to a cataclysmic event known as “The Quiet Rapture”, which destroyed nearly every planet and took out all the stars. A mission is being carried out on a moon covered in an ocean of blood, with the hope that whatever they discover there may be the key to saving humanity.

A convict named Simon (Mark Fischbach) is being forced to board the SM-13 submarine, or the “Iron Lung”, as punishment for his involvement in raiding the Filament Space Station and destroying it, causing a huge number of casualties. The organization overseeing the operation is called Eden. The sub will go across the moon’s blood ocean and recover something that not even he knows what it is. After going over the materials he’s been given and looking over his depth meter, Simon notices a skeletal figure projected on one of the images he sees. Blood is also dripping inside the sub.

After a brief period of no communication, the sub feels a heavy impact. Simon’s handler Ava (Caroline Kaplan) speaks to him through the radio to try and make sure he’s still on task. Simon becomes spooked and wants to back out, but Ava only cares if there is damage to the sub and seeing the mission through to the end. The crew raises the sub back up after Simon confirms there’s no damage. He thinks he will be let out, but he is still set to go back. Simon protests since it’s now known something alive is down there, but he is instructed by Ava to ram whatever they find and recover a sample before he’s welded into the sub and dropped back down.

Simon starts to freak out and mess with the controls and activate the camera until Ava tells him to knock it off. She explains that the camera he is using in the sub requires x-rays to see through the blood, and him using it has caused him to irradiate the crew outside the sub, including damaging the skin on Ava’s face. Simon calms down and returns to the mission. He’s contacted over the radio by another crew member named David (Troy Baker), who is no friendlier than Ava. Going through the rest of the sub, Simon discovers audio log from the previous sub pilot, despite being led to believe he was the first person do go through with this mission. He also finds a piece of paper instructing him to “cross the streams.”

Ava makes contact with Simon over the radio. He argues over being sent on a suicide mission while Ava yells back that there aren’t enough people to get this job done. He resolves to do what she says and ram into the creature below. The sub makes impact, and Simon is thrown around. He loses consciousness and briefly sees visions of himself as a child.

Simon comes to and works to repair the machine and collect the sample. He gets the lights back on but can feel himself slipping in and out of touch with reality, seeing flashbacks of the raid of Filament Station and the violent aftermath. Simon quickly puts out a small fire. He then sees on the camera a sub labeled SM-8, previously unknown to him.

A female voice starts talking to Simon over the radio, seemingly a previously lost member of one of the earlier subs. Simon thinks he is hallucinating and starts mentally breaking down, wondering out loud if his mission is even real. The voice starts talking about a light beneath the blood ocean. The voice gets more intense and furious, leading to Simon experiencing a hallucination where the sub breaks apart and he sees a giant eye in the sky overlooking the blood ocean, which he is then submerged in.

After recovering from a bout of sickness, Simon hears Ava contacting him. She says he’s been out for a few days but admits to him that there were three others before him on the mission. Simon begs to be let up, but Ava now says that they have new orders to hold and observe, and that the simple bone sample is not worth risking bringing up something that could be contaminated. When Simon mentions the SM-8, she then tells him to recover the sub’s black box and that she will personally rescue him if he succeeds.

Simon proceeds with his task, hearing numerous voices as he gets closer. More blood and matter start to leak into the ship. It touches Simon’s skin and burns him, and the skin under his bandages look burnt and boiled up. He gets back into contact with Ava, who now says she cannot rescue him but still demands the black box. The creature then grabs onto Ava’s vessel and destroys it, killing her. Now her voice is among the other victims of the blood ocean, plaguing Simon’s ears.

Simon now decides “fuck you” to everything since he is going to die anyway. He manages to get to the black box by crawling through blood, just as the creature gets closer. He sabotages the sub to depressurize. The creature chomps into the sub, causing it to blow up and destroy the creature with Simon inside.

The last thing we see is the black box floating strapped to Simon’s life vest, emerging from the blood ocean.

Simon is a convict forced to pilot a sub on a moon containing a blood ocean so that he may recover a sample that can be useful in saving humanity after a cataclysmic event known as "The Quiet Rapture". This is punishment for him and others raiding a space station, causing the deaths of numerous people.

Simon discovers that there is a creature lurking beneath the blood ocean. The deeper he gets, the more he starts to lose touch with reality. After discovering the remains of a previous sub, he is instructed by the crew's commander Ava to recover the sub's black box. Simon realizes he was not the first person to be put on this mission, as others have been killed in the mission as well.

The creature kills Ava by destroying her vessel. Realizing he is doomed, Simon recovers the black box but sabotages the sub so that it will explode when the creature bites into it. Simon and the creature die, but the black box survives the explosion.