The Frenchman Alexandre Aja is back on his native land to sign an unpublished work: Oxygen. Worn by Mélanie Laurent, the film tells the story of how a mysterious young woman with amnesia wakes up in a medical chamber in the middle of nowhere. Panicked, she will try everything to get out alive.
Oxygen: a thriller under tension
Alexandre Aja is one of the masters of horror films. He directed the remakes of The Hill with Eyes and Piranhas. Recently, he served his fans a muscular survival with Crawl. So here it is again on Netflix with a new proposal: Oxygen. The film is based on a simple concept: total confinement in an unknown place. A concept already exploited through the seventh art in many works such as Buried. 
With Oxygen, Alexandre Aja does not revolutionize the genre, but allows to bring a solid vision to a genre under tension. The filmmaker signs a perfectly controlled work, which plays with the sensations of his audience. Oxygen is a physical film, which takes place essentially behind closed doors in this unidentified box. Mélanie Laurent embodies a solid heroine who can count on the presence of an artificial intelligence that will more or less help her, voiced by Mathieu Amalric. Finally, there is not much to say about Oxygen. It is an effective thriller, which does not take huge risks but offers an interesting and rhythmic reading of the genre.
A film deeply rooted in the themes of its filmmaker
Oxygen is certainly one of the most affordable films of its author. More popular than his previous works, Oxygène nevertheless fits perfectly into Alexandre Aja's themes. Once again, the filmmaker addresses the notions of confinement and physical prison, which he has already addressed in his previous essays. A way for him to push his interests to his peak. The pace and tone are perfectly executed, and the 100 minutes of footage are neither too long nor too short, perfect to tell this story. 
The film can also count on an interesting and well-masked final twist, which gives a completely different identity to the film. Tribulations impossible to reveal here, which allow Oxygen to rush into themes much broader and vertiginous than the simple notion of claustrophobic survival. So, overall Oxygen is a very cool movie. Alexandre Aja signs a thriller under tension extremely effective. An intelligent feature film, which offers a clever final twist, and allows its filmmaker to renew himself within his own themes of confinement. The film has been available on Netflix since May 12. https://youtu.be/WwYXOSrRyCo
