“Oxygen” (French; 2021; sci-fi/survivalist drama; run time 1 hour, 41 minutes; directed by Alexandre Aja, written by Christie LeBlanc; rated TV-14 for fear, language; streaming on Netflix) is a COVID-19 movie without specifically being a COVID-19 movie. It is set at an unspecified time that would appear to be well into the future, but its themes of claustrophobia, isolation, the longing for human connection, doom, uncertainty and a planet in peril will seem awfully familiar to those living through the pandemic. That wasn’t entirely by design, as Aja’s project, though shot in the summer of 2020, was well under way before the coronavirus became a household word. Melanie Laurent (and she’s sensational as the only on-screen character appearing in anything but flashbacks) is Elizabeth Hansen. She’s stuck inside a cryogenic pod and has no recollection how she got there. When we meet her (in a scene that solidly sets the suffocating tone) she is gasping for air and trying to break out of what amounts to a cocoon while attached to all sorts of hoses, wires and sensors. She is alone except for MILO (voiced by Mathieu Amalric), an operating system not unlike HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” MILO proves as frustrating as he is helpful, as he repeatedly asks Hansen if she wants a sedative, reminds her each time her oxygen supply diminishes (and she’s at only 35 percent when the film opens), and warns her that damaging the pod could result in a prison sentence. Hansen must ask the right questions of MILO to determine who she is and if she can escape the pod alive. LeBlanc’s twists, teases and reveals are compelling (and there’s a terrifying jump-scare), and Aja serves them up in due time, many of them in Hansen’s memories, which might or might not be real. A non-speaking robotic device on the pod is the movie’s scariest character. Laurent shoulders the load by conveying myriad extreme emotions, doing so while being limited to being on her back in tight quarters for almost the entire movie. Laurent’s Hansen is terrible at conserving oxygen, but her terror is understandable. After all, she’s slowly suffocating. The first half of the film is better than the final act, by which time the movie is dancing on the edge of implausibility if you haven’t fully bought into the whole sci-fi thing. I loved watching this, mostly because of the premise and Laurent’s riveting performance. But some viewers will not embrace it — especially the ones who are claustrophobic. My rating: 87 out of 100.