I’m intrigued, and Kermode likes it, so I’ll definitely be giving this one a watch:
Oxygen is really good! I think I even liked it better than Buried, the similar premise with Ryan Reynolds and a cellphone. But I’m especially liking Alexander Aja’s return to form with Crawl and Oxygen: competent heroines dealing with contained settings. And Oxygen’s plot reveals are…well, I’ll refrain from saying anything so you guys can discover them.
-Tom
Also, I dragged this out of one of those catch-all threads you guys like so much where movie conversations go to get buried and die. How appropriate!
-Tom
Thanks for the thread. I’ll check it out tonight.
I like the first ten minutes so far!
I finished this last night and I like it. This was my first movie of this type (bottled movie/constrained setting)?
I don’t know how to describe it but the movie was claustrophobic when it needed to be using the camera it self. There was one shoot from the side that I thought was really well done. Made me feel really hopeless for her.
One thing I really didn’t like was how the heroine yelled so much. Didn’t seem like be in character especially under the ticking bomb premise of the movie. Also I wish they explain more of the constrains of the malted powder product so I understood what could and couldn’t be done.
The first question I would’ve asked Milo was is it was also the OS for all the other Omicrons. Also, all the plot twists (outer space, clone, diverting air) I saw coming a mile away. That didn’t take away from the movie though.
I also liked it. I found the things MILO could and couldn’t do/answer a tad contrived, but that’s pretty inevitable
with a set-up like this, and I guessed the main twist ahead of time . Also I’d have preferred a tragic ending, but that’s just me - and I suppose it’s technically ambiguous. But despite all that, still probably the best hardish sci-fi I’ve seen in a long while.
Spoilering the whole conversation just in case
I agree. The tragic ending would’ve been better. I could’ve done without the sci-fi novel cover pose at the end.
I’ll just leave this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayfk9T73kBU
What a powerful bit of music (reminds me a bit of some of the organ-in-a-cathedral music that Hans Zimmer did for Interstellar), and what an amazing scene in the movie. Leave it to Alexandre Aja to start it with a jump scare!
-Tom
I was similarly bothered by the disconnect between the ticking clock and the protagonist’s behavior. It felt like things that were good for narrative pacing and showing internal emotional states were bad for her actual chances of survival.
Still, an above average sci fi film.
Fantastic directing choice. And what a great movie! For anyone who didn’t like the ending, just pretend it’s in Liz’s dream as she falls asleep. Like a nice version of Minority Report.
And keep in mind that things don’t end well for the actual Elizabeth Hansen, who’s a widow and presumably an impending casualty in an extinction level pandemic. It reminds me a lot of the ending of a certain 2015 videogame called Soma.
-Tom
I think it ends pretty well for her in the grand scheme of things: there are definitely worse ways to go out in an apocalpyse, though I suppose it depends to a certain extent on your feelings about teleporter clones and the self. She’s directly responsible for saving humanity, and is vindicated in her life’s work. Her clones don’t even “reject their programming”.
I thought I’d posted my thoughts on that here, but apparently not. There is a fairly big distinction though between this premise and the game’s, or for that matter the teleporter thought experiment, in that the latter two depend for their force on continuity of experience at the point of transfer, which the film premise does not have, at least on the evidence given. I’m not sure the distinction is all that important for the film, but it does exist.
Yeah, that’s what I was getting at with technical ambiguity. Especially given that the O2 count stops at 0, not before, and she surely still needs some O2 even in suspension..
Loved it, ending was good, a tragic ending would have made it so meaningless. There was already so much tragedy in it hinted and shown
I mean, not really. Like I say, whether “Liz” survives or not, humanity is saved, it’s just at a tragic cost both for Liz and especially “Liz”, who had no say in the matter (and presumably “Leo”, given that he’ll have Leo’s memories of Liz). “Liz’s” particular travails would in one sense be meaningless, but, you know, that’s life - a struggle to carve out identity and meaning during our brief stint in a hostile uncaring universe. Also, she did leave that message for “Leo”.
By the way, for what it’s worth, here’s Aja talking about the ending. And it’s interesting that it’s changed from the original script.
In French cinema, it is called a huis clos. Not sure whether the term has been co-opted in other languages.
I haven’t seen the movie yet but am very curious about it given the reactions here. I’ll be back to discuss once I do.
Ah, leave it to the French to figure out when something needs its own word. I don’t think there’s a comparable English term. I can’t wait to mangle the pronunciation on the podcast and have people wonder what this “weak-low” thing is. See also, me trying to talk about wuxia.
-Tom
Ha! Looking forward to hearing that.
“Huis-clos” totally makes up for the fact that French has no word for “shallow”. We use “not very deep” instead.
I just did a little search. I wonder if it’s based on the movie of the same name. The movie synopsis sounds like it’s based on a trapped room scenario.