A kite formed like a horse, a cicada-filled Baltimore world, and a black-and-white aesthetic nearly perversely hooked by itself disaffected weirdness — author/director Albert Birney’s “OBEX” is a surreal, early-’90s’-esque odyssey into its most important character’s (additionally performed by Birney) habit to his classic Mac and incapability to type precise human connections. With the lo-fi scrappiness of a dot matrix printer and the hallucinatory male-specific anxiousness of David Lynch‘s “Eraserhead,” “OBEX” tells the story of an awkward-under-his-skin pc programmer named Conor who escapes dreary black-and-white Baltimore right into a fantasy world to defeat a demon named Ixaroth.
Birney, who beforehand co-directed the sci-fi journey rom-com “Strawberry Mansion” with Kentucker Audley, writes, directs and stars within the film as Conor Marsh. Dwelling alone along with his canine Sandy, he makes customized dot matrix printer picture reproductions for cash over the submit, whereas a neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez) brings meals supply and a few dialog via the door. Apart from that, his flimsy grasp at human connection just about stops proper there.
Alternative knocks, although, when an advert from Concatix Software program presents a online game that supposedly permits the participant to insert themselves in it. An invite arrives, inviting him to “take away your pores and skin.” In the meantime, the Baltimore round him doesn’t really feel that hospitable anymore anyway. Conor’s encounter with this system pulls him right into a fantasy land that feels straight out of “The Legend of Zelda” as his canine goes lacking, and he wends himself via a mystical different world. Conor’s reclusive self is now changed by a questing self — one which includes pushing a whole lot of the concern of different individuals and new experiences apart, maybe opening himself up extra carefully to the world again at house.
FIlmed in monochromatic black-and-white and set in a pre-internet 1987 with analog know-how craftily rendered to swimsuit the interval, “OBEX” already feels primed for midnight film standing. Cinematographer Pete Ohs and composer Josh Dibb assemble an nearly soothingly eerie world, guided by Conor’s (and ergo Birney’s) off-kilter attraction. Amusingly, Conor groups up with Frank Mosely as Victor, a man with an ’80s TV set for a head and human physique elements in all places else. These parts sound twee on paper however really work to paint Birney and his group’s world with much more particular and infrequently pretty oddball imagery than its already bizarre premise promised. In the meantime, the drone of synths and cicadas create a threatening surroundings from the beginning, whereas suggesting the chance that perhaps that is all simply an extension of Conor’s introverted psyche.
“OBEX” is actually a collection of each-more-bizarre-than-the-next set items that conjure not solely our personal baked-in nostalgia for the ’80s however the films that knowledgeable what the ’80s-nostalgic aesthetic is in any respect (therefore “Eraserhead,” which got here out within the late Nineteen Seventies however proved as influential as something that adopted it). The droll humor and kitschy manufacturing design aren’t going to work for each human on the planet, however why ought to they? And one other query the film is maybe asking: Why are we so nostalgic for an analog world? As a result of life is just too up to date, and life has gotten too technologically sophisticated. “OBEX” is a heat yearn for easier occasions, instructed by a particular cinematic voice.
Grade: B+
“OBEX” premiered on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. It’s at the moment searching for U.S. distribution.
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