Netflix‘s latest original movie is currently the number one film on the platform. Wednesday saw the debut of sci-fi thriller Oxygen on the streaming giant, and it seems to have been an instant smash with subscribers as it’s immediately raced up to the top of the charts worldwide, according to the latest stats from FlixPatrol.
The French-language movie is a high-concept claustrophobic thriller starring Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds), Mathieu Amalric (Quantum of Solace) and Malik Zidi. It follows a young woman (Laurent) who wakes up to find herself in a medical cryo unit. Without any idea of who she is or what she’s doing locked in a box no bigger than a coffin, she must rebuild her memory in order to find a way out of this living nightmare before she runs out of oxygen.
Alexandre Aja – known for his extensive horror background, including helming 2006’s The Hill Have Eyes remake and 2019’s Crawl – directs. According to Rotten Tomatoes, this one currently ranks as the mostly highly regarded film of Aja’s career, as Oxygen sports a near-perfect 94% on the review aggregate site at the time of writing, although its RT audience score is slightly lower, though still very positive, at 78%.
As the critics consensus puts it: “Oxygen gets the white-knuckle maximum out of its claustrophobic setting, with director Alexandre Aja and star Mélanie Laurent making this a must-watch thriller for sci-fi fans.”
Oxygen has beaten out a trio of other recent Netflix originals to take the top spot on the worldwide most-watched movies chart this Thursday, knocking animated family film The Mitchells vs. The Machines into second place and Amanda Seyfried horror/mystery Things Heard & Seen into fifth. In the United States, specifically, the pic has managed to slide into the top five, with Mitchells still reigning supreme domestically.
If you haven’t done so already, be sure to catch Oxygen on Netflix now.