Alexandre Aja

From High Tension to Crawl, Alexandre Aja is known for crafting pulse-pounding survival movies, but his latest, the Netflix thriller Oxygen, the filmmaker leaves behind bloody set-pieces and deadly predators in favor of a contained sci-fi approach. Mélanie Laurent stars as a young woman who wakes up trapped in a high-tech medical pod with no memory of who she is and discovers she’s rapidly running out of oxygen. With only her wits and an A.I. system named M.I.L.O. (Mathieu Almaric), Laurent’s character has to puzzle out who she is, how she wound up in the pod, and most importantly, how she can get out alive.

Crawl 2 may well happen, according to director Alexandre Aja. The filmmaker recently revealed, as reported by Bloody Disgusting, that a sequel to the 2019 alligator creature feature is being discussed. Aja has been working on putting together a take for the sequel, which he says is really fun. Alexandre...

It all seems so simple at the start. Netflix’s new sci-fi survival thriller Oxygen begins with a straightforward “what if?” — what if you woke up in a coffin-sized box, with no memory of who you are, and had to find a way out before you ran out of oxygen? But despite what the title might have you think, it’s not a simple survival story that ends up being the crux of the film, it’s the forgotten memories and what they mean, not just for the survival of Mélanie Laurent’s character, but for the future of all mankind.

What’s next from Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D) in the wake of brand new Netflix movie Oxygen? Speaking with BD’s Boo Crew Podcast this week, Aja teased everything from a sequel to Crawl that’s in the works to an adaptation of Junji Ito’s Tomie that had been set up at Quibi, and he’s also working with Amblin on something special.

Filmmaker Alexandre Aja was already doing well for himself with movies like “Haute Tension,” “The Hills Have Eyes” remake and “Piranha 3D”. But 2019’s fun creature feature “Crawl” was something of a breakthrough for him, the movie scoring strong reviews and overcoming a lack of promotion to result in a $92 million box-office haul off a $13-15 million budget.

We are not the only ones to desperately crave for a sequel to 2019’s Crawl, as director Alexandre Aja reveals he’s talking “nonstop” about how to make Crawl 2 happen. Talking to Bloody Disgusting’s The Boo Crew Chat podcast, Aja said that the team is working to find the best way to deal with a possible sequel story.

As you may recall, it was announced a couple years back that Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes, Crawl, Oxygen) was directing a live action adaptation of Junji Ito‘s manga Tomie, with the project set up at Quibi at the time. Of course, Quibi has since shut down and vanished off the face of the earth, which leads us to wonder if Aja’s Tomie is still happening.

Alexandre Aja has been infatuated by the genre of one-location cinema. The director’s latest film, “Oxygen,“ marks his deepest descent into this tingling fascination. In the likes of “Buried” with Ryan Reynolds or “Locke” with Tom Hardy, the entire film takes place in one medical cryo unit no longer than a coffin. Our protagonist, Liz (Mélanie Laurent), wakes up in this confined space with a limited supply of oxygen and must quickly restore her memory before time runs out.

This week's episode of the Empire Podcast is one of those jam-packed, bumper-sized affairs. Largely because we have three incredible directors guesting on the show. First up is Mike Rianda, whose animated marvel The Mitchells Vs The Machines, is one of our favourite movies of the year thus far. He talks to Chris Hewitt and Ben Travis about his experiences making the movie, providing a few voices along the way, and even reveals that he listens to the pod. We're so sorry, Mike.

Buried, in which he played a man who awakens to find himself buried alive in a pine box with a failing cellphone, rapidly depleting oxygen, and eventually, a snake. It was pretty good, and as someone whose third biggest fear is being buried alive (octopi and mental decline take up the first two slots), I found myself in a state of heavy anxiety for the entirety of the film. This is a good thing.

French filmmaker Alexandre Aja’s newest film, Oxygen, finds Mélanie Laurent trapped inside a cryogenic chamber with a little less than 90 minutes of air left in her tank. A survival thriller set in the confines of a single pod, the Netflix feature is another entry into Aja’s single-location series, one that elevates into an expansive thrill ride of excitement and focused adrenaline.

Single-location films can be considered something of a game between the creators and audience—beyond the way any bit of narrative could be considered a game between storyteller and audience. Walking into a movie knowing it takes place in one location, especially if that location is the size of a coffin-like cryogenics pod, one almost begins to make a list of questions for the director in their head. How will you justify any scenes that take place outside of the space? How will you build character or introduce new people into the story? How are you going to keep this interesting? If the writer and director and everyone else involved haven’t properly thought these questions through, the audience is out of luck.

Netflix’s Oxygen (Oxygène), a French-language thriller set inside a tiny cryogenic pod, went through a handful of iterations before landing as an eerily timely take on confinement. The film, based on Christie LeBlanc’s 2016 Black List script, was originally slated to be shot in English and with Anne Hathaway attached to star. It was later transformed into a project led by Noomi Rapace with Franck Khalfoun directing and Alexandre Aja producing. Ultimately, the pandemic scuppered plans for that version and Aja took over helming duties with Mélanie Laurent in the role of Liz, a doctor who wakes up amid a labyrinth of wires and tubes in an extremely confined space and with no idea where she is, or why. The contained race for survival film, part of Netflix’s push to local-language productions, was shot last summer — just after the first Covid lockdown lifted in France — and releases globally today.

Though his films haven't always hit the mark, Alexandre Aja has proven himself to be one of the most adept horror directors working today, and fans have been anxiously awaiting his next project since the release of 2019's wildly entertaining creature-feature, Crawl. Oxygen represents something of a departure for the...

The challenge of the single-location film offers clear benefits and disadvantages. On the one hand, the stakes are built in. You’ve got a limited amount of air in a single place, the setting is inherently claustrophobic, and you’re likely racing against the clock. Audiences can quickly understand and invest in the situation. The trick of it all is how to keep the film interesting when you have limited room to maneuver and only a single actor on camera. Your thrilling premise can quickly devolve into a tedious gimmick. To the great credit of director Alexandre Aja, screenwriter Christie LeBlanc, and actor Mélanie Laurent, their new movie Oxygen always keeps us hooked as they’ve wrapped the premise in layers of mystery where we’re compelled not only by our protagonist’s survival, but also the particulars of her situation. The great joy of Oxygen is finding out how the filmmakers will keep the story going and what new twist they’ll reveal to fuel the plot.