Fantasia 2025: OBEX: Beautifully Strange and Strangely Beautiful

For all its overt strangeness and surreality, it is the tenderness of OBEX that stands out. This a tactile yet ethereal film about a lonely man with a computer (not given a time period but evocative of an earlier era of computing, the time of floppy disks, etc.) who makes his living with ASCII art and, eventually, finds himself inside a computer game — trying to save his dog (but also leaning about himself).

The whole film has this wonderful balance of dry wit and aching sadness. The pervasive strangeness feels earned, legitimately uncanny and bizarre — never strange just for the sake of it. Every affected inflection or surrealist touch feels like it has floated up from the depths of the subconscious, anchored with meaning even if it’s unclear to the viewer. This is aided by some indelible imagery all the way through.

The film is arresting in spite of its simplicity. Black and white visuals help to ground the uncanny and sell the idea that the real world is peculiar, not just the world of fantasy. A slowness helps the film, committing to scenes of the lead typing out his painstaking portraits that have this mesmeric effect. It captures time gone and resonantly pictures a skill that now may be outmoded. This grounds the text as being intelligently about the relationship between people and technology. This film deepens, taking in ideas of media consumption, and the film ends in a ruminative, nuanced space — opening up thought rather than closing it down.

The core appeal, though, is the palpable sense of difference. This is a unique voice tackling ideas in a way you haven’t seen done before. You can make parallels but would only do so to try and get a stronger grasp on the text — it is its own thing. Certainly a film that will alienate many but also one that will utterly fascinate those that truly get on board.