By Robert Scucci
| Published
What do A Classic Horror Story, The Conference, and Oxygen all have in common? They’re all internationally produced, non-English speaking Netflix Originals that I wish more people knew about. Listen, I know that English dubs don’t emote properly, and subtitles may seem like a chore, but so is watching some of the stateside Netflix Originals like Time Cut, which is basically a 92-minute commercial for Olive Garden and Butterfingers masquerading as a teen horror flick.
Oxygen, one of the best sci-fi flicks I’ve seen in a very long time, may be a French-language film, but you’ll get so sucked into its bare-bones story and claustrophobic setting that you won’t even realize you’re reading the dialogue off the screen, which forces you to pay close attention, making it impossible to escape the uncomfortable atmosphere it’s thrusting on its audience.
An Uncomfortable Experience All Around
As somebody who has the stomach for the goriest of horror flicks, Oxygen f*cked me up because I’m claustrophobic, and adding the vast nothingness of deep space to the equation makes the story all the more terrifying because there’s no masked antagonist or deep state conspiracy that the viewer is introduced to– we’re simply dealing with a single woman alone with her thoughts, and the highly intelligent AI lifeform that’s trying to guide her to safety.
Like its title suggests, the primary source of conflict in Oxygen is, in fact, a lack of oxygen. When a woman known as Liz (Melanie Laurent) wakes up shrink-wrapped in a tiny medical pod in an undisclosed location, she immediately finds herself hysterical because the only thing she knows is that she has about 90 minutes of oxygen to find out who she is, where she is, what kind of sick experiment she’s being subjected to, and who’s behind said experiment. Having access to a supercomputer named M.I.L.O. (Medical Interface Liaison Officer), Liz scrolls through vast databases in her attempts to remember who she is, and how long she’s been locked up.
Using the limited resources she has at her disposal in Oxygen, Liz slowly but surely uncovers the origin of the pod, but is misled every step of the way whenever she uses M.I.L.O. to contact the authorities, or any other outsider who may have intel on her situation.
Merde
Losing her sense of self as old memories of her sickly husband Leo (Malik Zidi) begin to occupy the front of her mind, Liz places her trust in M.I.L.O., who isn’t necessarily a force of evil, but clearly has been instructed to not fully reveal the truth about her situation. Having to choose between putting herself back into hypersleep and risk running out of oxygen, or suffocating while searching for answers, Liz has to think fast in her disoriented state while she waits for the authorities to rescue her, but doesn’t have a compelling reason to believe that help is actually coming any time soon. Facing her own mortality as a literal oxygen clock is ticking right in front of her, Liz desperately tries to remember who she is, where she is, and whether she’s locked up voluntarily or against her will.
A Powerhouse Solo Performance
Melanie Laurent has all the respect in the world from me because filming Oxygen couldn’t have been a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, the pod she’s in, which probably isn’t bigger than a bathtub, is probably more spacious than I think from a production standpoint, but it’s still an immensely claustrophobic setting that made me all the more anxious when I realized that there probably had to be camera and crew members on-site to make Oxygen possible.
Technicality outside of the on-screen theatrics aside, Laurent’s genuine portrayal of fear and isolation-induced confusion will have you sweating bullets when you realize that she’s alone, and has no reason to trust anything she’s being told while searching through vast databases for her origin story.
To put it bluntly, Oxygen made my skin crawl, but its sense of urgency kept me from looking away because of how well-acted it is, which is commendable when you consider the fact that we’re talking about a lone woman conversing with a disembodied, artificially intelligent voice in such a limited setting.
If you’re ready to challenge yourself with one of the best Netflix Original sci-flicks on the platform today, I’d strongly advise you to watch Oxygen in a wide, open space because if you don’t you’ll feel just as locked up and hopeless as Liz.
