‘Obex’ Review: Lo-Fi Fantasy in Love With Outdated Technology Offers an Earnest Warning
Hand-labeled VHS tapes line the shelves of the living room where Conor Marsh (Albert Birney), a 36-year-old man living alone with his dog Sandy in 1987 Baltimore, spends many hours watching late-night horror movies and broadcast programs he’s recorded on a setup composed of three stacked CTR TV sets. This analog library of thrilling fictions and ephemeral images preserved on tape is part of the bevy of references in “Obex,” a miniature epic of melancholic whimsy endearingly conceived in black-and-white with a lo-fi aesthetic.
This ingenious fantasy about the perils of finding comfort in screens while avoiding flesh-and-blood connections is the product of the close artistic partnership between Birney — who wrote, directed, edited and stars — and Pete Ohs, credited as the cinematographer, co-writer and co-editor. Together, Birney and Ohs are also behind most of the modest, yet sagaciously employed visual effects. The result of their joint artistic labor amounts to idiosyncratic world-building with a retro sheen. This is hand-crafted cinema.
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Conor, a recluse making a living by “redrawing” photographs on his Mac computer using symbols, won’t even leave the house to get groceries. Instead, his neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez) helps with that task. Hissing cicadas outside his door are a horror-evoking reminder of the bustling, overwhelming world beyond his isolated suburban kingdom.
Still, eager to not be only a spectator in the media he consumes, Conor submits a video of himself and Sandy so that digital versions of them can be created and inserted into a new interactive computer game called OBEX. One night, after Conor plays the rudimentary (and disappointing) floppy-disk adventure game with pixelated graphics, Sandy disappears. The culprit is IXAROTH, a digital demon whose body is made of blinding, flickering light. Though the design of its mask comes directly from Birney’s previous feat of imagination, “Strawberry Mansion” (co-directed with Kentucker Audley), IXAROTH’s constitution brings to mind the horned entity in Carlos Reygadas’ radical “Post Tenebras Lux” as it wanders through Conor’s home. To rescue his beloved pup, Birney’s lonesome character must enter OBEX’s fantastical medieval realm, where odd creatures dwell, and defeat IXAROTH in his castle.
“Obex” shares some wiring with last year’s “I Saw the TV Glow” by Jane Schoenbrun. Both entrancing, singular films warn about how an obsession with media can stunt one’s footing on reality — though the latter ventures into more tenebrous terrain as it deals with repressed identity. The directors in both cases grapple with their obvious adoration for the entertainment that shaped them, juxtaposed with the acknowledgment that living through screens can only ever be a simulacrum and not a replacement for a fulfilling existence.
More contained than “Strawberry Mansion” but with similarly expansive ideas, “Obex” feels opportune for the modern era. Whether in front of his monitor or his vertical TV totem, Conor seeks endless distraction from the here and now. Even if more cumbersome, the outdated technology that Birney and Ohs lovingly fetishizes serves the same purpose, and can cause similar damage as the cell phone in one’s pocket today. But, of course, it’s their immediacy and the perils of the global reach of the internet that make these current tiny machines portals into unspeakable abysses. A wide-eyed Conor at one point suggests that some day, everyone will live in computers, to which one can only say: If you only knew.
Birney enters the darkest recess of Conor’s dreams and nightmares in evocative scenes that materialize his fears and force him to become the hero of his own story. On top of the ravishingly kitschy manufacturing of costumes and environments, Ohs’ monochromatic shots composited with striking artificial backgrounds suspend “Obex” in a space that feels somewhere between past and present. It’s the kind of filmmaking one is willing to accept with all its by-design limitations because it makes up for them with ingenuity tenfold.
During his quest for Sandy — fueled by Josh Dibb’s soaring synth score, honoring the movie’s 1980s DNA — Conor makes an unusual friend: Victor (Frank Mosley), a humanoid television (who has the body of a man with a TV set for a head). Conor talks to him about his late parents, while Victor dreams of a heaven where the devices we stare at for hours have a chance to flip the script and observe humans. When Victor asks Conor what his ideal heaven would look like, his simple answer highlights the minimalist beauty of what truly matters, and what he’d for long been missing. And since time in the land of OBEX operates differently — moving faster that the real world — it confronts the protagonist with his impending mortality.
Birney’s performance as a computer geek at first pleased with the microcosm he’s built for himself only to shed his skin through the journey and become braver, relies on the earnest innocence he transmits. That “Obex” isn’t a voyage in search of romance makes it even more relatable and unexpected. Sure, Sandy provides comfort and companionship, but Conor’s battle is with himself. Rather than trying to fill his emotional needs via external means, the real mission in his trip through OBEX is regaining interest in the game of life.
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