I was updating my watch list of films being released in 2026 when I stumbled upon the title OBEX. I knew nothing about it, heard nothing about it, and was not at all familiar with writer/director Albert Birney or his previous body of work. Hell, even the premise didn’t really get me interested in seeking it out. What did sell me on it was its perfect blend of generally favorable reviews, a brisk 90-minute runtime, and the fact that it was available to stream for free on Kanopy. While the movie itself will most likely carve a permanent spot in the lower-middle tier when it comes time for my year-end rankings, I walked away from it feeling that its mere existence is of the utmost importance in the world of indie filmmaking.

Set in suburban Baltimore circa 1987, the story follows Conor Marsh, a reclusive loner who spends his days working under the pseudonym “Computer Conor”, translating other people’s photographs into ASCII Art (for the uninitiated, which I was before looking up just what in the hell this art form was called, it’s making digital imagery using only characters from your keyboard). At the end of the workday, he watches VHS tapes on his tower of TV sets before adjourning to his bedroom where he uses more computers to sing 8-bit karaoke, all culminating in finally drifting into sleep using synth-heavy, ambient soundscapes.

Conor’s only connection to the outside world is through brief interactions with his neighbor Mary when she drops off groceries, and he occasionally plays outside with his dog, Sandy, the latter acting as more of a reassurance for his seclusion, as 1987 was a year of the dreaded cicada awakening.

Everything starts going downhill when Conor decides to order a computer game called OBEX, advertised as a personalized adventure. He records a mini biography of himself and Sandy and sends it off to recieve his floppy disc fanatsy game, only to find out upon playing that it’s a total scam and the game doesn’t do much of anything. Feeling cheated, he tosses the game. Not long after, his printer turns itself on and prints an eerie message that something is hidden inside his VHS collection, driving Conor to the brink of complete madness as he feverishly goes through each and every tape, ending with him not finding anything. While he sleeps that night, the villain from the game shows up and steals Sandy.

Upon waking and discovering Sandy is missing, Conor walks outside and is greeted with a mysterious computer on his doorstep. He is then transported inside the OBEX game where he must navigate the game’s trecherous realms and confront his inner fears in order to reach the castle, defeat the villain, and rescue his dog.

I’m all for a good story that blends reality with fantasy. With OBEX, however, once the shift is made from real world to video game realm, it doesn’t just feel like a change in scenery, but a different movie entirely. In my experience, anytime a story feels divided into two or more distinct parts that feel separate from eachother, it rarely works. This film is not an exception, but for the sake of reviewing it, the divided halves make it easier for me to break down my thoughts.

Let’s start with the first and, in my opinion, vastly superior section of the film. I was almost immediately on board with the ultra low-budget, black and white asthetic. It was impossible to not see influences of David Lynch’s Eraserhead and, once the paranoia starts to really kick in, Darren Aronofsky’s Pi. This is the stretch of film where the low budget works for the asthetic and not against it. You could find these clothes and props in someone’s attic or at a thrift shop. The suburban house and lack of different locations works for building the tension and fear of the unknown that come with living in isolation, and because us as viewers are limited to only seeing what the Conor sees, we get to truly feel that sense of unknown dread.

Then Conor enters the video game realm and everything mentioned above that was a positive starts working against the film. As was not the case due to the limited scope of the first half, it becomes glaringly clear that the ideas outweigh the budget in the second half. The vast landscapes feel like they were shot in a field that was almost certainly down the street from the neighborhood that Conor’s house was located. The clothing seems like cheap Halloween costumes that were resurrected from someone’s dusty attic.

Speaking of costumes, this allows me the perfect segue into the one big personal gripe I have with this part of the film. A video game aficionado I am not, but I did play enough growing up to at least have a good idea that things like Conor’s hat, the grassy landscapes, and the mystical shop that provides him with the necessary tools for his journey were probably references to The Legend of Zelda. Even so, I still had to look it up to make sure I was correct. I’m no stickler against a few winks or easter eggs for fans, but when the things happening on screen won’t entirely make sense for the uninitiated, it’s doesn’t make for good storytelling. Does it hinder the plot incoherent by not explaining these things? Not really. One could still deduce that the journey was one of self exploration that will give our hero the confidence to defeat the villain and rescue his friend. But a little exposition can go a long way, and it seems that the filmmakers are counting on audience’s prior knowledge of the medium to fill in any gaps. I also feel that my lack of admiration for the video games it is referencing made it harder to look past the lackluster production of this segment of the film.

So why would I write such a piece on a film I was, at best, lukewarm on? The answer is simple: this is an important film and is a small piece of the big puzzle that is saving independent cinema as we know it.

Yes, that is quite the heavy statement. Allow me to explain…

I wrote and directed my own feature film when I was in my early 20s. The inspiration behind this bold decision was watching Kevin Smith’s 1994 indie sensation, Clerks, about a thousand times throughout my teenage years and into my early adulthood and thinking, “I could do that.” I soon discovered that Mr. Smith’s inspiration to make his shoe string budgeted, black and white slice of suburban reality came from watching Richard Linklater’s 1991 debut, Slacker, and thought to himself, “I could do that.” This inevitably sent me down a rabbit hole. Before I knew it, I was struggling to find enough hours in a given week to watch all of the small indie movies I had stumbled upon whose stories began with the filmmaker saying “I could do that.”

I remember multiple people try to convince me that shooting my own feature was damn near impossible without a budget of at least a few million. I can also recall numerous conversations over the years with individuals, some with entire scripts completed, who were convinced that they couldn’t make their film until they secured proper funding and backing from a studio. I shudder to think of all the possible groundbreaking films we will never see, due simply to the creative minds thinking they weren’t “allowed” to follow their dream.

While I watched OBEX, I thought to myself that same thought I had when I watched Clerks. Then I got to thinking when the last time was that I watched a movie and had that thought. This made me think even further about when the last time I watched a movie that was made by someone who had that same thought.

It’s no secret that less and less movies are getting made each year, and the ones that are getting funded are usually bankable to investors. Hell, even the indie movies being made by young filmmakers are usually the biproduct of a successful YouTube or TikTok channel with a certain large number of followers that most people will never attain. The fact of the matter is that the indie movies made by filmmakers who said “screw the budget, I’ve got a camera. Let’s go!” are almost nonexistent these days. Films like OBEX, though very far from perfect, are a reminder that it is possible to make a movie with whatever it is you have available to you. This is why I hope this movie gets seen by enough people to inspire even one more person to pick up a camera and say “I could do that”.