Oxygen

A woman wakes in a cryogenic pod. She does not remember who she is, the lid will not open, and the oxygen level is falling. Her only interlocutor is the pod's artificial intelligence. Alexandre Aja directed. Mélanie Laurent stars, with Mathieu Amalric voicing the AI M.I.L.O. and Malik Zidi as Léo Ferguson. The whole idea rests on one location: the camera almost never leaves the pod, and the tension runs entirely off a falling oxygen percentage. The cast settled on the third attempt. Anne Hathaway was attached in 2017, Noomi Rapace came aboard in 2020, and the present cast was set in July 2020 with Aja taking over as director. Principal photography happened that same month. Netflix released it on 12 May 2021. Rotten Tomatoes has 90 percent of 106 reviews positive with a 6.8 average; Metacritic sits at 67. Who it is for: viewers who like confined thrillers and single-performer films. Who it is not for: anyone claustrophobic, or anyone who needs the plot to move. It takes place inside a box from beginning to end.