"Director Albert Birney stars as Computer Conor, a shut-in who makes a living from virtuosically tapping out ASCII reproductions of people's favourite photos and, on his downtime, watching several VHSs simultaneously on his three-television-high stack. Outside is Mary, an unseen grocery-delivery girl, and the unsettling writhings of the biological world in the shape of an emerging cicada brood."
"Obex's first half bears a distinct resemblance to Eraserhead, with a tightly wound protagonist doing the rounds in his personal microverse. Birney racks up the intensity with askew shot choices, insistently sluggish pacing and atonal sound design and score supplied by Animal Collective founder Josh Dibb."
"Once Conor dons a Zelda-style cap and heads through the portal, the film loosens up: as well as a live-action homage to classic role-playing games, with Mary transformed into a power-up vendor, his adventure cuts closer to the kind of pastiche silent-movie picaresque Guy Maddin delights in."
Obex follows Computer Conor, a shut-in who creates ASCII art reproductions and lives among stacked televisions. When he subscribes to a mail-order sword-and-sorcery video game called Obex, his printer mysteriously commands him to remove his skin, and a demon named Ixaroth steals his dog. The film's first half resembles Eraserhead with its claustrophobic protagonist navigating his personal microverse through askew cinematography and atonal sound design. In the second half, Conor enters a portal wearing a Zelda-style cap, encountering Mary as a power-up vendor in a live-action RPG homage. While lovingly crafted with retro pastiche elements reminiscent of Guy Maddin's style, the film ultimately resolves conventionally, addressing Conor's childhood trauma rather than achieving Lynch's surrealist ambiguity.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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