While the likes of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Steven Lisberger’s TRON have examined the thrills and fears of humanity’s relationship with screens since the early ‘80s, there’s been a recent, renewed interest as the number of screens in one’s life has ever-expanded. At last year’s Sundance Film Festival, Jane Schoebruen explored identity-forming bonds with media and the eventual curdling nostalgia with I Saw the TV Glow. This year, OBEX finds Albert Birney following Strawberry Mansion with another inventive and lo-fi adventure, but one that finds the director honing in with a more satisfying focus. Even though our main character spends every waking moment in front of a screen, this is no damning screed but an earnest, even poignant look at how entertainment can provide a sense of comfort for the most lonely souls.
It’s 1987 in Baltimore, an unlucky year in which 17-year cicadas have descended to torment Conor Marsh (Birney), a rather isolated, agoraphobic individual who only comes in contact with the outside when he’s dropping his trash or picking up a weekly grocery delivery from kind neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez). Otherwise, every waking moment is spent in front of a screen. He pays the bills as an ASCII artist on his Mac computer, captured in a triumphant flurry of finger-tapping in the film’s most laugh-out-loud moments. He spends evenings in front of his unique three-TV set-up, recording any special programming (notably Nightmare on Elm Street) to add to his vast VHS collection. He bathes in front of a TV and even goes to sleep while basking in the glow of one, complete with his own proto-MP3 player that plays a song or sound at his request with crude visualizations. With the love of his life, his dog Sandy, beside him every second, Conor’s starkly hermetic lifestyle is upended with the arrival of a new interactive game, OBEX.
It’s initially presented as a too-simple, cheesy adventure game. But then Sandy goes missing and Conor’s life is turned upside-down as he embarks on a mission to save her, plunging himself inside a brave new world. While the less said about this bifurcated second half the better, Birney achieves a DIY feat of visual-effects work that recalls the unsettling devil-creature of Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux and last year’s scrappy, inventive Hundreds of Beavers or the Zelda-influenced Riddle of Fire, along with a heavy dose of the late David Lynch. As fears and nightmares of the first half find new, more tangible forms in the second, OBEX employs unnervingly effective sound design when it comes to the infesting cicadas and jarring static of this early day of the digital revolution, complete with some imagery that doesn’t feel far removed from the bug-crawling ickiness of The Return’s “Gotta Light?”
All this imagination would be for naught if Birney didn’t find an emotional throughline, and while the romance you think may blossom with Mary ultimately rings underdeveloped, he does find poignancy with our relationship with screens. In anthropomorphizing the unexpected, Birney explores his character’s upbringing with a strange, earnestly affecting approach, including a complicated kinship with his mother in Lynchian dreams and a brief, memorable connection with his late father. For Birney, an existence raised on televisions and screens is not something to wholesale dismiss, but rather a life-giving portal to new worlds and dimensions.
As Conor gets closer to his goal––replete with playful, Middle Earth-like touches and matte-style backgrounds that give a strong sense of scope to what’s clearly a miniscule budget––the finale can approach a bewildered feeling of throwing everything against the wall. Yet with its cohesive black-and-white cinematography from Pete Ohs, a dedicated performance from Birney, and a plethora of crafty homespun special effects, OBEX is an inherently likable journey that should appeal to more than just those whose childhood was similarly, inextricably linked to this early era of computing.
OBEX premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.