Cross-media recommendations across film, TV, games, books & music — picked by taste.
Iron Lung places a convicted prisoner inside one of science fiction's bleakest premises: an event called the Quiet Rapture has erased every star and every habitable planet, leaving a universe stripped to almost nothing. What remains is a desolate moon, an ocean of blood, and a cramped submarine just barely equal to the task of searching it. The film works in the register of claustrophobic cosmic dread — isolation pushed past survival into the existential — and that signal carries well across horror, bleak sci-fi, and stories where the hostile environment is the true antagonist.
Iron Lung is a 2026 American independent science fiction horror film starring writer, editor, and director Mark Fischbach, better known by his online alias Markiplier. It is based on the 2022 video game by David Szymanski. It also stars Caroline Kaplan, Troy Baker, Elsie Lovelock, Elle LaMont, Mick Lauer, Seán McLoughlin (Jacksepticeye), Isaac McKee and Alanah Pearce. The plot follows a convict (Markiplier) who is forced to pilot a submarine through an ocean of blood on a desolate moon following an apocalyptic event known as the "Quiet Rapture" that caused all the stars and habitable planets along with their human inhabitants to disappear without warning.
From the Wikipedia article Iron_Lung_(film), available under CC BY-SA.
Series
The Silent Sea
A small team on the moon races through a 24-hour window to retrieve samples from an abandoned facility shrouded in classified secrets.
Series
NieR:Automata Ver1.1a
Humanity driven to the brink retreats to the moon, organizing resistance while an overwhelming alien force controls the world below.
Series
No. 6
In a tightly controlled future, one person's life unravels after a single transgression exposes the nightmare beneath a seemingly perfect society.
Series
Black Bullet
Humanity cornered by a viral parasite lives in terror inside shrinking territory, where darkness and despair define every waking moment.
Series
Goliath Awaits
Survivors sealed inside a sunken liner build an isolated society, cut off from the world above for decades with no rescue in sight.
Series
Super Atragon
Fifty years after two submarines vanish in WWII, their officers' descendants are sent on a secret new mission into the deep.
Game
Iron Lung
Pilot a tiny submarine through an ocean of blood on an alien moon — the direct source material the film adapts.
Game
Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason
An investigator boards a frozen, doomed vessel in the Arctic, confronting horrors locked inside a crew killed by cold and something far worse.
Game
Iron Sky: Invasion
A Nazi armada built secretly on the moon descends on Earth — extreme isolation as the cradle of an existential, civilization-scale threat.
Game
[REDACTED]
A prison on an icy moon is overrun, and one guard must survive a relentless horde to reach the last escape pod before it's gone.
Game
EMPTY SHELL
Volunteers are sent into a secret facility under a false pretense, finding themselves trapped in a dark industrial environment full of hidden horrors.
Game
Destiny: The Dark Below
A forgotten enemy stirs beneath the moon's surface, threatening to end the fragile order humanity has rebuilt above it.
Book
Heart of iron
A young outlaw adrift in space clings to a surrogate family, where identity and belonging are forged far from any stable world.
Book
A Fall of Moondust
A vessel trapped beneath the lunar surface puts passengers and crew in a sealed, slowly closing world with no easy rescue.
Book
Aye, and Gomorrah
Ordinary lives intersect with grief, crime, and moral reckoning — science fiction as a lens on human psychology under extraordinary pressure.
Book
The Feros
A group uses hard-won abilities to rescue missing allies, driven by loyalty when institutions fail and time is running out.
Book
Phoenix Island
A teenager imprisoned in a remote facility discovers its true, lethal purpose and fights to save others before it's too late.
Book
Shift
A powerful few prepare in secret for a coming catastrophe, while the rest of the world unknowingly ticks toward an irreversible end.
Film
Iron Sky
A secret Nazi space program hides on the moon for 70 years, then launches a massive armada against Earth.
Film
Ash
On an alien world, a sole survivor faces psychological and physical terror while deciding who — if anyone — can be trusted.
Film
Iron Sky: The Coming Race
After nuclear war devastates Earth, humanity's remnant shelters on the moon while a buried power beneath the wasteland could save or destroy them.
Film
Leviathan
Underwater workers in an isolated ocean-floor base discover a lethal cargo, turning survival into a race against a genetic horror closing in on them.
Film
Stranded
A lunar crew trapped by disaster must endure a sealed, failing habitat where an unseen gas turns ordinary repair work into mortal danger.
Film
Armageddon
A desperate mission against a world-ending threat sends an unlikely crew into a hostile environment with no guarantee of return.
For more isolated-environment dread, Ash puts a lone survivor on a hostile alien world with a psychological twist, while The Silent Sea packs a claustrophobic lunar mystery into a 24-hour mission with high stakes and classified secrets.
The 2022 game Iron Lung is the direct source — a short horror experience where you pilot the same blood-ocean submarine. Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason extends that frozen-vessel dread into a longer investigation of a doomed Arctic crew.
The premise removes almost every anchor: the stars are gone, the planets are gone, and humanity's last condemned representative is sealed inside a tiny sub in an ocean of blood. The horror comes from total cosmic erasure rather than any single monster.