Conor (Albert Birney, who also writes and directs) lives as a shut-in in a small Baltimore house with his dog Sandy (Dorothy), where he runs a small mail-order business: People (kids, mostly) send him pictures along with five dollars, and he sends them back a portrait rendered in the futuristic medium of ASCII on a dot-matrix printout.
Can you think of a more 1987 job than that? Connor even runs an ad in Personal Computing magazine, and the issue it's on gets flipped through lovingly on-camera. Birney, who made this film with a tiny handful of collaborators and a diminutive budget, was five in the year Obex is set, but does a good job of capturing the feel of being into computers in that decade (some petty technical quibbles aside). I should probably note that he co-directed the very enjoyable Strawberry Mansion; This one's got a similar sense of warmth, wry humour, and weirdo sensibilities. The humour, slow pacing and nostalgia-driven setting also reminded me of Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess.
It's a slow, slow film, easing us into the particulars of Conor's life before weird shit starts to happen. Our protagonist is good company, and Sandy is a very, very good girl, but be warned you'll be treated to a midi-assisted, strangely sedate karaoke rendition of Gary Numan's Cars, and a prolonged taping of Nightmare on Elm Street before anything really happens. Eventually the plot does kick off: Obex, a dodgy computer game Conor signs up for on a whim, ends up summoning a demon into his house (a wonderfully creepy, well realized scene); The demon, Ixaroth, kidnaps Sandy and takes her back into its evil castle, forcing Conor to put on a Legend of Zelda cap and venture out past the cicada-infested wilderness out back and into the computer game, running into a couple of friendly NPCs and some hilariously naff insect-headed, army-jacketed goons.
While Conor's quest never quite gels as high adventure (not with this budget), it does manage to make its otherworldly jaunt adventurous, at least: Skeletons are slain (again), an ubiquitous storekeep (Callie Hernandez) lends help and exposition, and perilous locations are traversed via the medium of overlaid maps. Birney and his cinematographer (and co-star) Pete Ohs have a gift for dream-like imagery; Their black & white digital photography gives the film an effective, uncanny atmosphere and an enveloping sense of darkness, even when it's inevitably punctured with a goofy joke or two.
Obex is a slight - very slight - dark fantasy, one that balances its fundamental sweetness (remember, this is the tale of an overtly shy guy that risks everything for his dog) and gentle sense of humour with some surprisingly dark moments and a fairly effective sense of dread. It's cheap-looking to a fault and takes its sweet time to get anywhere, but if you have the patience and the temperament for this sort of thing, it does so in a very likeable way.
