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

In any other case generally known as Oxygène, this 2021 French survival thriller stars Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds) as a girl 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 one among its 101 minutes.

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

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

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

Extra perceptive viewers might really feel in another way, 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 large 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 girl caught in a futuristic field must have a reasonably compelling girl in that field. I felt her terror, desperation and anger as she contended with the likelihood of a horrible demise and different extremely unfair points of her predicament. 

There are a few issues I did not love about this movie. As an illustration, Laurent’s trapped character makes no try in any way to settle down and preserve her life help (which is, in fact, simple for this viewer sitting in a snug chair to be aggravated about). 

All through the movie, Laurent’s character sees fragments of reminiscences that do not appear to assist her a lot past one scene near the very finish. And that scene is unceremonious — she wants to seek out one thing within the current and immediately 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 at all times need a flick to do: It gripped me from the protagonist’s first strained breath throughout to the tip. I might strap again in and watch it another time.