A dragon shaped like a horse, a cicad-filled Baltimore world and a black and white aesthetics almost perverse connected to its own affected weirdness-writer/director Albert Birneys “Obex“Is a surreal, early 90’s’ -sque Odyssey in his main person (also played by Birney) depending on his vintage Mac and inability to form actual human connections. With the LO-Fi scrap of a dot matrix printer and the hallucinatory male specific anxiety for David Lynch“Eraserhead”, “Obex” tells the story of an awkward-under-skin-skin computer programmer named Conor fleeing from sad black and white Baltimore to a fantasy world to defeat a demon called Ixaroth.
Birney, who previously collaborated with the sci-fi adventure Rom-Com “Strawberry Mansion” with Kentucker Audley, writes, controls and stars in the film as Conor Marsh. He lives alone with his dog Sandy and makes adapted the Dot Matrix printer’s photore productions for money over the post, while a neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez) provides food delivery and some conversation through the door. Other than that, his spun grip at human connection quite a lot stays there.
However, the possibilities knock when an advertisement from the Concatix software offers a video game that probably allows the player to insert into it. An invitation arrives and invites him to “remove your skin.” At the same time, Baltimore around him doesn’t feel so hospitable anymore. Conor’s meeting with the program draws him into a fantasy land that feels straight out of “The Legend of Zelda” when his dog disappears, and he turns through a mysterious other world. Conor’s recurring I am now replaced by a sought me – one which means that you drive a lot of the fear of other people and new experiences aside, maybe open up to the world at home.
Filmed in monochromatic black and white and sat in a pre-internet in 1987 with analog technology that is prominent to suit the period, “Obex” already feels founded for midnight film status. Kinematographer Pete Ohs and composer Josh Dibb construct an almost soothing eerie world, guided by Conors (and Ergo Birneys) Off-charm. Entertaining collaborates Conor with Frank Mosely as Victor, a guy with an 80s -TV apparatus for a head and human body parts everywhere. These elements sound two on paper but actually work to color Birney and his team’s world with even more specific and often lovely odd ball pictures than its already strange premise. At the same time, the drone of synths and cicadas creates a threatening environment from the beginning, while suggesting the possibility that it may only be an extension of Conor’s introverted psyche.
“Obex” is essentially a series of each-more-basre-one-one-set-pieces that not only develop our own baked nostalgia for the 1980s, but the films that informed what the 80s nostalgic aesthetics are at all (therefore “Eraserhead “, which came out in the late 1970s but turned out to be influential as everything that followed it). Drollhumor and kitschy production design will not work for every person on the planet, but why should they? And another question that the movie might ask: Why are we so nostalgic for an analogous world? Because life is too modern and life has become too technically complicated. “Obex” is a warm longing for easier times, told by a distinct cinematic voice.
Rating: B+
“Obex” premiered at 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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