Netflix Original Films and European Auteur Cinema: ‘Universal’ Particularities in Alexandre Aja’s Oxygen

The emergence and extraordinary rise of streaming platforms in recent years has reshaped the landscape of popular film production and consumption at national and international levels. Vying with traditional (theatrical) cinema, these services have among other things provided a space for popular European auteurs to direct films that are by definition highly individualised – even idiosyncratic – and locally embedded, while simultaneously enjoying immediate and expanded global reach. A case in point concerns one of the few popular contemporary European directors to have benefited from such continued international commercial and critical success; France’s Alexandre Aja. Aja typically works in horror and other genres long perceived as somewhat antithetical to his national culture and film production context (Bey-Rozet 2021, 191–192). Additionally, he is the only one of a handful of horror directors emerging from France to have thrived in the genre. As his filmography has expanded, it has become increasingly clear that Aja’s work exhibits the referential characteristics of transnational dialogue, and a preoccupation with highly geo-culturally marked allusions is one of the elements identified by Tony Perrello in his convincing argument for Aja as auteur (2010, 15–34).