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Oxygen Movie Review

Oxygen is a 2021 French science fiction thriller film directed by Alexandre Aja and starring Melanie Laurent. It’s a very effective genre film from Netflix.

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“How many of the others are also awake?“

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A woman wakes up in a cryogenic chamber with no recollection of how she got there, and she must find a way out before running out of air. This is a one-location movie that really works. It makes great use of the pod setting by utilizing every single detail in it. The thrills here are particularly superb with the twists and turns that come and go being sometimes predictable, but mostly very satisfactory. The movie in its overall plot reminded me pleasantly of the classic ‘Moon’.

It felt a bit too reminiscent in the clone storyline to that film, but still the plot is so well crafted that it ultimately worked despite its similarities to previous SF films. MILO is also very much similar to HAL from ‘2001’, but the difference here is that he turned out good at the end of the day. I found his design and especially his voice very creepy. The scenes where he attacked her and tried to sedate her were the most intense of the bunch.

As for the protagonist, her story is quite moving and very well told with all twists being believable instead of contrived. In particular, the twist that she has been talking to her older self and that she is a clone of hers was terrific. The film wouldn’t have been twice as good had it not been for Melanie Laurent and her amazing performance. She sold all of her emotional scenes and the fact that the movie is composed of close-ups throughout made her work even more commendable as she was required to act it out in every single sequence.

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Oxygen is very well designed. The cryogenic chamber is cool and quite modern. The robot looked great and the editing is excellent with the flashback scenes being well incorporated into the plot, which should have been less complex for this type of movie, but for the most part I was satisfied with it. The direction from Alexandre Aja is reliably professional. Netflix has become a really good place for these low-budget SF flicks.