Oxygen (2021) Movie Review

Oxygen – Claustrophobic Nightmare

 

Director: Alexandre Aja

Writer: Christie LeBlanc (Screenplay)

Starring: Melanie Laurent, Malik Zidi, Laura Boujenah, Eric Herson-Macarel, Anie Balestra, Marc Saez, Cathy Cerda

Plot: A woman wakes in a cryogenic chamber with no recollection of how she got there. As she’s running out of oxygen, she must rebuild her memory to find a way out of her nightmare.

Tagline – No escape. No memory. 90 minutes to live.

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

There may be spoilers in the rest of the review

Story: Oxygen starts when a woman wakes up in a cryogenic chamber, she must figure out why nobody has opened the chamber and more importantly, who she is. The computer operations system M.I.L.O trying to keep her calm, the woman learns that she is Elizabeth Hansen, a woman who worked in the cryogenic fields.

Elizabeth has only 90 minutes of oxygen to try and figure out how to escape the chamber or why she is even in the chamber in the first place, trying to piece together her life to escape.

Thoughts on Oxygen

Characters & Performances – Elizabeth Hansen is the woman who wakes up in a cryogenic chamber, she learns she only has 90 minutes of oxygen and must figure out how to survive the situation before it is too late. She must remain calm and figure out how to make it out of this position, using her limited memories to figure out who she is and why she is in this position. Melanie Laurent is own leading lady here, being the main focus of the performance, with her abilities needed to make this story unfold, she is incredible in her role that takes us on the journey. Any other character we meet are usually only by voices or flashbacks, which help Liz try to figure out the problem she is facing.

Story – The story follows a woman that wakes up in a cryogenic chamber and must race against time to figure out how to survive knowing she only has 90-minutes of oxygen and learn about who she is. This is a story that will see one person contained with little chance of escape in the similar style as Buried, only with the sci-fi twist to everything going on within the film. The memory loss side of the film does show how technology has created a chance for people to try and figure out what has happened too. The story does have the twists along the way, even if the final reveal does become clear early on in the film.

Themes – Oxygen is a sci-fi film that is filled with the horrors of being trapped in a cryogenic chamber, it gives us the race against time, with the real time feeling to everything going on, while using the technology that shows that certain factors could be taken away from the human factor. The special effects are amazing in the film, with the chamber having different reveals to what we get to see in the film.

 

Oxygen is a wonderful claustrophobic sci-fi horror, which is filled with tension throughout the film.