{"id":1868,"date":"2021-05-10T22:50:33","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T02:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=1868"},"modified":"2023-12-12T05:58:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T10:58:18","slug":"film-review-oxygen-is-a-tense-claustrophobic-thriller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=1868","title":{"rendered":"Film Review – ‘Oxygen’ is a Tense, Claustrophobic Thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something very disorienting about waking up in a place you don\u2019t recognize. It\u2019s a feeling we\u2019ve likely all experienced at least once in our lives, after emerging from a particularly long or deep sleep. Jet lag can fuel a confusion in the body about what time it\u2019s supposed to be, and being in a new home or room can add to that.<\/p>\n

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In most cases, it\u2019s a fleeting, momentary sensation, one that dissipates once reality sets in and it once again becomes clear that surroundings are as they should be and all is well. But when that doesn\u2019t happen, and details continue to become elusive even after enough time to theoretically acclimate has passed, panic can start to set in since it\u2019s not easy to escape a situation that can\u2019t even be properly understood.<\/p>\n

In Netflix\u2019s new sci-fi drama Oxygen<\/em>, a woman (M\u00e9lanie Laurent) awakens in a cryogenic pod. She can\u2019t remember who she is or how she got there, but her mind works well enough to tell her how to communicate – in her native French – with the unseen computer voice (Mathieu Amalric) that spits back far more information about her vitals than about anything she actually wants to know.<\/p>\n

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She deduces that she must be in a hospital and that help can\u2019t be far away, and, unable to move or escape her close quarters, uses every instinct she can muster to come up with as many details as possible to figure a way out of a scenario that she knows won\u2019t give her long due to the rapidly dropping level of oxygen she\u2019s repeatedly told she has.<\/p>\n

This film takes a simple premise that\u2019s been utilized many times before, that of a protagonist who doesn\u2019t know who she is and has to re-learn everything critical with a ticking time clock. The feeling of claustrophobia is absolutely present, beginning with the woman, who soon discovers that her name is Elizabeth, starting to move while she\u2019s clearly not meant to, forced to claw her way out of a constraining suit that serves as a cocoon.<\/p>\n

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Once she has successfully broken free, her challenge becomes even more cumbersome, since there is now a mental block to go along with the physical one, forcing her to be clever in how she manipulates a computer meant to keep her where she is into feeding her clues about how to outsmart it.<\/p>\n

This film\u2019s best asset is its lead actress, Laurent, who has had decent international success after a breakthrough role in Quentin Tarantino\u2019s 2009 film Inglourious Basterds<\/em>, where she demonstrated her ability to play a witty survivalist more than capable of going up against formidable enemies and relishing the opportunity to do so. She was charming as a love interest for Ewan McGregor in the underrated Beginners<\/em>, and has also appeared in other American productions like Now You See Me<\/em> and Operation Finale<\/em>. This return to French cinema offers her the opportunity to fully embody a character who knows how to instinctively react in an objectively terrifying situation, and she deftly keeps her frantic anxiety in check as she does her best to focus while alarm bells sound regularly, reminding her of the impending asphyxiation that awaits her.<\/p>\n

This is a film where audiences may be considerably more aware of what is going on than Elizabeth is, able to piece together a likely direction for the narrative even while Elizabeth jumps from theory to theory in her desperate attempts to comprehend that which she has been shown and that which she has heard. Director Alexandre Aja is known for his ability to enhance horror fare like High Tension<\/em>, The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D, Horns<\/em>, and Crawl<\/em>, and here he brings a carefully-calibrated approach that enables 100 minutes of one woman trapped in one location to feel urgent and involving. It\u2019s not a revolutionary or groundbreaking concept, but one that\u2019s fairly well-executed and certainly capable of maintaining suspense.<\/p>\n

Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n