By 
Many people fantasize about being heroes, but few ever find themselves in a real-life situation where they are called upon to save the world. Perhaps that’s part of the massive appeal of video games, which enable anyone with a console and a controller to live out their fantasies of heroism without leaving the confines of their home. Filmmaker Albert Birney’s latest feature, OBEX, delves into the liminal space between reality and gaming as a reclusive man (played by Birney himself) is sent on a quest to save his beloved dog (played by Birney’s dog, Dorothy, in a scene-stealing performance). Co-written and shot by fellow indie film stalwart Pete Ohs (Jethica, Love and Work), OBEX is preoccupied with themes similar to Birney’s earlier feature Strawberry Mansion and the work of Jane Schoenbrun (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, I Saw the TV Glow), including the power of nostalgia and the desire to disappear into a different world, built from dreams and nightmares, where you can be anything and anyone you can imagine.
The Game’s Afoot
OBEX is set in 1987, just as computers were starting to become part of people’s lives, but before the digital realm could fully displace the analog as the average person’s escape of choice. Our unlikely hero, Conor (Birney), lives a solitary life in Baltimore with his dog, Sandy. He spends his days creating portraits of people on his computer, which he prints, folds up, and sends to customers via snail mail in exchange for cash; at night, he indulges in horror movie marathons and the occasional karaoke serenade. Conor is so reluctant to leave the safe space of his house that a kindly neighbor, Mary (Callie Hernandez), buys his weekly groceries for him, yet even indoors, it’s impossible to escape the ever-present buzz of the recently emerged cicada brood in the air.
source: Oscilloscope Laboratories
One day, Conor sees an ad in the newspaper for a new state-of-the-art video game called OBEX. The company asks you to record a video, sharing information about yourself, which they then incorporate into the game to create a custom adventure starring you. Conor obliges, though he is disappointed when the game arrives and doesn’t deliver on the lofty, high-tech promises of the advertisement. However, when Sandy suddenly disappears—seemingly kidnapped by the villain of OBEX and taken inside the world of the game—Conor has no choice but to follow her into a surreal world populated with kindly princesses, fearsome knights, and a friendly guy named Victor (Frank Mosley) who happens to have an old television for a head.
For the Love of Dog
OBEX is shot in a grainy black and white that emphasizes the film’s nostalgia for the technology of the past and the excitement it once promised; now, screens mediate so many of our everyday interactions that, instead of feeling more connected than ever, we feel more isolated. The first half of the film is a slow burn that sets up the monotony of Conor’s everyday life in the real world, albeit surrounded by the artificial light of so many screens, almost too effectively. It’s easy to grow impatient for something to happen, though the delightful presence of Dorothy as Sandy helps hold your attention while also making Conor’s eventual plight incredibly relatable. After all, who wouldn’t venture literally out of this world to rescue such a good girl? (Or their own beloved pets, for that matter—I know I would.)
source: Oscilloscope Laboratories
Fortunately, the second half of the film, in which Conor disappears into the world of the game, is much more fun, packed with imaginative visuals that are all the more impressive (and honestly, pretty spooky) for how lo-fi they all are. The film’s sound design is dense and immersive—those cicadas!—and goes a long way towards making the weird world of OBEX feel capable of swallowing you up in the same way it does Conor. Still, there is a bittersweet undercurrent to all the adventure as Conor is forced to reckon with the personal losses that have left him so lonely that Sandy is his only true friend; without her, he has nothing left to tie him to the real world and keep him from drifting off into the unreality of the game.
Conclusion
Like Strawberry Mansion before it, OBEX is a cinematic adventure with substantial charm in spite—or perhaps because—of its imperfections.
OBEX opens in select theaters in the U.S. on January 9, 2026, with a national expansion to follow. It will be released digitally on February 6, 2026.
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