OBEX (2025)

3 stars

Lightbulb Film Distribution. Blu Ray and Digital. 9th March

It is 1987. Conor Marsh (Albert Birney) lives alone with his dog and is effectively a shut in. He watches his tower of TVs. To earn a living he sits at his computer and recreates photos of people by typing out dots and dashes on his computer and printing them out on his printer. He then addresses the envelope and leaves it outside his house to be picked up for mailing. This is how he spends his day it seems. Isolated. He advertises in computer magazines (remember those?) and earns five bucks for each pic he creates.

A friend, Mary (Callie Hernandez), delivers his food shopping for him, but he only interacts with her through the door.

Then he spots an advert for OBEX. A breakthrough in interactive gaming that supposedly puts you inside the game. All he has to do is submit a tape about himself and they will use their state of the art tech and insert him into the software. He sends off his submission and carries on with his mundane life. Constantly watching TV or doing karaoke whilst in bed.

Then the game arrives and he pops the disc into his Mac – but it’s not very good. Disappointed he ejects the 3.5 inch floppy. However, soon after odd things start to happen. His printer spews out the repeated words ‘Remove Your Skin’ late at night. And a symbol of a videotape at the bottom and ‘I’m Inside’.

About halfway through things flip and he appears to be in the game for real. His dog goes missing and he goes to find the canine, meets Mary who gives him the supplies he will need to go to the castle to rescue his pet. He must travel across Obex on his quest…

Birney, who directed this weird movie and co-wrote the script with Pete Ohs, was also one of the directors and co-writers on STRAWBERRY MANSION, a film I really liked. However I struggled with this arty, black and white outing and wondered who this film was aimed at. It seems to be going out of its way to be obtuse. At times surreal and often quite silly this was clearly made on a low budget. It is certainly imaginative and has ambition – and if nothing else, it’s different.

Steve Kirkham

EXTRAS on Blu Ray

Audio Commentary with Albert Birney & Pete Ohs; 7 Deleted Scenes; 3 Short Films; Recording the Score; BTS Stills Gallery; Trailer