Extra Individuals Ought to Watch This Taut Netflix Survival Thriller

Caught within the limitless Netflix scroll? Looking for one thing to truly watch, not partially watch whilst you’re in your cellphone? Open that Netflix search question and sort “Oxygen.”

In any other case often called Oxygène, this 2021 French survival thriller stars Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds) as a lady trapped in a claustrophobic pod with a dwindling provide of oxygen. Her efficiency mixed with the evocative rating and requisite twists tethered me to her dire plight for each certainly one of its 101 minutes.

Oxygen builds pressure proper from the off. Our protagonist, wrapped in unusual materials whereas mendacity on her again, positive aspects consciousness. It is darkish, and a blinking crimson gentle illuminates her wrestle to interrupt via her creepy second pores and skin. She emerges gasping for air.

Quickly, the viewers is aware of a number of extra issues about this blue-eye, blonde-haired lady. She’s locked in a cryogenic pod and can ultimately be unable to breathe. She’s additionally missing just about any useful reminiscence about who she is and the way she ended up there.

Speaking her via her horrible circumstance is an AI known as MILO (for “Medical Interface Liaison Operator”), which provides off irritating vibes akin to an automatic cellphone menu. MILO is cussed about how Laurent’s character phrases questions, but it surely does help her in some methods. With the assistance/non-help of MILO, she desperately seeks a approach out of her tight spot.  

Extra perceptive viewers could really feel otherwise, however I started the movie as flabbergasted as Laurent’s character about what might have landed her in that pod. The solutions come within the type of huge twists. 

The thriller retains viewers invested, as does the spacious sci-fi rating and pressing tempo.

Then there’s Laurent’s character. A film totally a couple of lady caught in a futuristic field must have a fairly compelling lady in that field. I felt her terror, desperation and anger as she contended with the likelihood of a horrible demise and different extremely unfair elements of her predicament. 

There are a few issues I did not love about this movie. For example, Laurent’s trapped character makes no try in any respect to settle down and preserve her life assist (which is, after all, simple for this viewer sitting in a snug chair to be aggravated about). 

All through the movie, Laurent’s character sees fragments of recollections that do not appear to assist her a lot past one scene near the very finish. And that scene is unceremonious — she wants to search out one thing within the current and out of the blue simply remembers it from the previous.

However these points did not dampen my viewing expertise an excessive amount of. In all, Oxygen did the one factor I all the time need a flick to do: It gripped me from the protagonist’s first strained breath all over to the top. I might strap again in and watch it over again.