Albert Birney Channels Eraserhead in Oddly Pleasing Throwback to Eighties Pc Gaming

A palpable air of nervous anticipation hangs over OBEX. It is 1987; the Chilly Conflict is reaching its finish and the web age looms, stuffed with promise each of risk and of hazard. For the agoraphobic “Pc” Conor Marsh (Albert Birney, who additionally writes, directs and edits), a connection to the skin world is simply possible via his early-age Macintosh and an incessant stream of stories and cable-aired movies. Secluded but content material, Conor restlessly waits for the world to meet up with the digital age — till, in the future, he and his canine Sandy get caught contained in the titular pc sport. All inside a flimsy floppy disk.

Birney, whose Strawberry Mansion equally employed surrealist imagery, right here goes for one thing way more subdued in each tone and visible aesthetic. If David Lynch is the plain parallel level for the iconoclastic filmmaker, then Eraserhead is OBEX’s barely much less paranoid cousin. The strangest factor right here may be how unperturbed Conor is by the unusual goings-on in his tiny Baltimore house, a mirrored image, maybe, of simply how plugged within the coder is to a digital area that’s nonetheless in its liminal nascence.

Shot by co-writer Pete Ohs in black and white with a constant shallow depth of area, OBEX rapidly immerses us in Conor’s peculiar setup. Seemingly, Conor’s solely companion is Sandy, a small terrier that he had mysteriously discovered on his doorstep. The one human Conor appears to work together with is his neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez), who fetches his groceries for him and speaks to him solely via his entrance door. Conor’s career begs credulity, not a lot for what it’s however for a way little he will get paid to do it: for less than $5, he’ll digitize a portrait of the one you love, which is to say that he makes use of black keys on white paper to attract an image with letters, numbers and symbols as his solely instruments.

Aside from that, the 36 year-old Conor would not do a lot. He appears joyful, with the one actual hassle being the swarm of cicadas offering an odd, high-pitched soundtrack to his each waking second. On three stacked televisions, he catches horror flicks like Nightmare on Elm Avenue and Friday the thirteenth on free cable and the nightly information, all of which he data for posterity and provides to his large wall of VHS tapes, data and CDs. At night time, he serenades his canine to mattress with lo-fi karaoke tracks or else crude sleep feels like ocean waves.

Two issues threaten Conor’s rigorously curated world. One, Mary is on the cusp of taking a brand new job which would require her to maneuver, thus necessitating a brand new grocery purchaser. Two, the sport OBEX, which is marketed in the identical pc journal the place Conor has posted his personal providers. “Utilizing state-of-the-art know-how, we insert you into the sport,” the advert guarantees, as long as you’ll be able to movie your self answering a brief set of regular seeming questions and may ship twenty bucks to the producer.

When the sport comes, it looks like a complete bust. There’s not a lot to do within the sport; they have put Conor’s face within the sport, but it surely’s pixelated and poorly animated. Conor discards the sport, but it surely appears the sport is not carried out with him: quickly, a luminous, horned creature is stalking the home and the swarm of cicadas exterior appear to balloon in quantity. Then, Conor wakes as much as discover Sandy has been kidnapped into the sport, and he should observe to retrieve her.

Birney’s work right here and elsewhere is way too linear to be really akin to Lynch, however there’s a particular kinship, particularly relating to the stability of unnerving pictures and black, ironic comedy. Conor’s printer out of the blue spits out an extended paper with the terrifying phrases “REMOVE YOUR SKIN” repeated like Jack’s manuscript in The Shining, however then there may even be a scene the place he has a mini panic assault about his cheddar being white and never orange. Later, after a run-in with a computer-headed stranger, the movie morphs right into a weird hero’s journey, and he comes throughout a bloodied bare lady in an open area at night time.

Maybe extra related a comparability level is the experimental visionary Maya Deren, whose dream-logic type relied on associative edits to create her distinctive ambiance. Watching OBEX is a uncommon deal with, most profitable as hapic gaming recreation, maybe satirically, when it is not within the sport however inside Conor’s oddball, remoted world. It could be not probably the most thrilling sport to be immersed in, however inside Conor’s bed room, the place he sings Gary Numan’s Vehicles earlier than nodding off, the risks of the world, demonic or in any other case, appear far, distant.

OBEX releases theatrically on January ninth, 2026.