Oxygen (2021)
Alexandre Aja Crafts a Claustrophobic and Twisty Sci-Fi Thriller
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Oxygen (2021)
The challenge of the single-location film offers clear benefits and disadvantages. On the one hand, the stakes are built in. You’ve got a limited amount of air in a single place, the setting is inherently claustrophobic, and you’re likely racing against the clock. Audiences can quickly understand and invest in the situation. The trick of it all is how to keep the film interesting when you have limited room to maneuver and only a single actor on camera. Your thrilling premise can quickly devolve into a tedious gimmick. To the great credit of director Alexandre Aja, screenwriter Christie LeBlanc, and actor Mélanie Laurent, their new movie Oxygen always keeps us hooked as they’ve wrapped the premise in layers of mystery where we’re compelled not only by our protagonist’s survival, but also the particulars of her situation. The great joy of Oxygen is finding out how the filmmakers will keep the story going and what new twist they’ll reveal to fuel the plot.
A woman (Laurent) wakes up in a cryogenic chamber. The chamber’s on-board computer MILO (Mathieu Amalric) informs her that she only has 33% oxygen remaining and that the number is dropping. The woman cannot remember her name or anything about herself, but she’s determined to use the tools around her to survive.
To say any more than that would be to spoil all the fun. It’s clear from the start—the film opens with an image of a rat in a maze—that what we’re viewing is not all that’s happening. This is both a survival thriller where the woman has to figure out how to stay alive when her oxygen supply is dwindling but must uncover also the truth about her circumstances (again, another tell here is that she has no memory of her name or her life, so obviously a mystery is being constructed around those questions). The way LeBlanc’s script is able to weave together both the survival aspect as well as the mystery makes for consistently thrilling and entertaining picture. Oxygen constantly had me checking my watch not because I was bored, but because I was mystified about how they could keep the story going.
Aja makes arguably his most impressive directorial effort yet as he sticks to the confines of the cryogenic chamber. There’s nowhere to hide and nowhere else to go, and every shot and cut carries the weight of not only the dramatic tension, but simply holding the audience’s attention. The space is barely larger than Laurent’s body, but there are so many clever decisions about what the chamber can and cannot do, and what it should look like that keeps us invested in what may happen next. For a film that easily could have felt static and run out of steam, Aja keeps his camera moving and always finds the right angle to best convey this story. He knows the space’s limitations and instead uses them as an advantage.
A large amount of credit must also go to Laurent, who needs to run the emotional gamut but is barely given much room to move her body. This is a film that relies heavily on her emotions and facial expressions, and it’s a good lesson in what makes a movie star. A movie star keeps you invested even when they’re the only one on screen and they’re in a single location. Again, there’s nowhere to hide. It’s all on Laurent, and she manages the job beautifully by playing it as fully human. She doesn’t have quips or some special knowledge. She’s figuring out what’s happening along with the audience, and she provides the emotional thread for every new discovery.
Oxygen is a gem of a sci-fi thriller because it lives or dies by keeping its audience intrigued. The survival aspect makes it a race against time, but in a way, that’s the least-interesting part because we know that it’s not like the oxygen will run out halfway, but because there’s so much mystery, Aja makes us believe that anything could happen. The film is basically playing a game with the audience where you’re trying to see if you can figure out what’s happening before the woman does, and while sometimes trying to get ahead of a film can be a pointless endeavor, Oxygen makes it fun and thrilling.
Rating: B+
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