Here is a single-location mystery thriller from first-time feature screenwriter Christie LeBlanc which is more than a bit on the preposterous side. It requires some hefty levels of disbelief suspension and plausibility buy-in. But the excellent Mélanie Laurent (from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds) sells it hard, and it’s a rather elegant contrivance, more restrained than usual from this director, the shlock-horror specialist Alexandre Aja.
Laurent plays a woman who wakes up enclosed in a cryogenic hi-tech pod, slightly bigger than a coffin, surrounded by screens and readouts, hooked up to various life-support wires. She can’t remember who she is or why she is there, although she is almost immediately plagued with traumatised flashbacks of being rushed into hospital. Or is she rushing someone else into hospital? She can’t move. She can’t get out. And, increasingly, she can’t breathe. She realises that her oxygen levels will last only around a 100 minutes, the…