Fantasia Fest 2025: OBEX Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Albert Birney’s OBEX is an ambitious, surreal adventure following Conor Marsh (Birney), a digital artist sequestered from society with his dog, Sandy. Set in 1987, Conor keeps himself occupied with early age technology, consisting of personal computing, playing video games, and watching movies on his VCR. His few interactions with other individuals include that with his lovely neighbor, Mary (Hernandez), who regularly brings him groceries when he can’t leave his home. When his newest game comes to life and kidnaps Sandy, he quests into this mysterious, fantasy realm to confront the demon that took his dog.

Birney drops audiences into the life of his character Conor, whose seclusion borders a level of social anxiety that isn’t fully developed. While his casual behavior and quaint interest in computer technology provides a wholesome tone to the film’s emotional structure, this prevents Birney from adapting to the elements of fantasy that Conor wishes to experience through ordering this mysterious game. Conor would much rather be posted up at home with his technology, evoking unmerited nostalgia for the audience that provides little integrity to the story.

Conor’s eventual transition into the game provides an underwhelming adventure akin to his experience playing a boring bootleg game he acquires from the mail, bouncing aimlessly between locations along the simplistic electronic score. Its lo-fi sound design is sparsely intensified through the buzzing cicadas around his neighborhood, often providing the film’s scarce surreality. While arguably fueled by the care he has towards his dog, Conor’s calm demeanor and cluelessness of his situation fails to provide a true sense of urgency until the very last minute.

Filming in black-and-white, focusing on early age computer technology, and incorporating video game elements throughout unfortunately isn’t enough to optimize the film into this hybrid of lo-fi creepypasta and David Lynch that Birney tries to emulate. The oversaturation of nostalgia in modern media is noticeable with OBEX, providing an analog sci-fi fantasy that is too passive to sustain itself outside its comfort zone, similar to Conor living his life.

still courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories

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Costa Christoulas

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