Fateful Findings

If you review this as a film- it's acting, it's dialogue, it's plot and it's cinematography- Neil Breen's movies resemble Wiseau's 'The Room'. Everything is so amateur and leaves the viewer questioning the director's sanity due to how he could see this as a complete movie.

Neil fully resembles Tommy; both are under the illusion that their movies are masterpieces due to the fame garnered when in reality they're just well known due to their odd existence. Neil is also the main character of his films, in this case, Fateful Findings, further supporting the argument that he's just gone a little bit crazy because of his midlife crisis .

If you expect a comprehensible movie, you're looking in the wrong place. If, however, you're looking for something to laugh at with a few friends, this is a great movie to watch. Honestly, I enjoyed it; Fateful Findings is so unaware of what it truly is, making it a thoroughly hilarious experience. Now, I am being a little vague with what this movie is about and that's because it feels like a soap opera- there really isn't a plot, just 'social' interaction. So many things happen at the same time- Neil's character Dylan is hacking the government, then a friend of his is murdered. he also spills his coffee in one of the most exaggerated, immersion breaking, attempts to act I have ever seen.

If you want a film for cheap gags- 10/10

If you want a real film- 2/10

I mean it, this is hands down the worst movie that I've ever seen in my entire life. For every bad movie I've ever seen, at least I could follow their storylines and there was some inkling of competence put into them. This movie doesn't even feel presentable, especially given the fact that it was released at a film festival. Although regarded as a "so bad it's good" flick, I do not feel that way as this film is so frustrating to sit through.

I don't even know how to describe the storyline as the movie jumps around from one plot point to the next, and not even in a coherent way. At first it seems to be about a boy named Dylan who develops these mystical powers from some black cube and soon uses them to hack into government databases as an adult, but then it constantly shifts between Dylan's friends subplots about these stupid marital dilemmas, Dylan's girlfriend's drug addiction, and even these disjointed misadventures with his childhood friend. The movie doesn't even really develop many plot points; the drug addiction plot point is barely looked upon, a teenage girl having a crush on Dylan is never bought up, and when Dylan's friend Amy shoots her husband Jim, we never see them ever again. Hell, even whenever Dylan goes back to hacking the government, I always forget it all happened, further proving how disjointed and confusing the "narrative" really is.

Adding on to that, the acting is incredibly wooden, and even saying that is an understatement. I guess the film's director could only use his friends for this, but couldn't he have at least tried to make them believable? When they're not failing to rise above being robotic, they either yell at the top of their lungs, or speak at such a monotone level that it's enough to make you fall asleep. However, the worst performance comes from the movie's creator Neil Breen, who plays Dylan himself, and does it so poorly that it's depressing to watch. At least Tommy Wise is so oddball ridiculous to look at and watch that his atrocious acting is delightful to sit through. Neil Breen doesn't rise above being blander than rice cakes and having less emotion than Bella from Twilight. When the best performance comes from a doctor at a meeting, there's a problem.

In terms of other aspects, I guess the cinematography and music are ok, but they reuse the same track over and over again, there are many long shots that don't even have much of a purpose to be there, and the effects are so obvious that even Birdemic had better effects. Oh, and there are a few times when the movie uses a green screen....not even gonna bother stating how obvious it is. I know this was made low budget, but if you can't even make your green screen look good, what's even the point?

To sum it all up....sigh.....no, I'm done. I'm done with this movie, I will never look back at it for the rest of my life. The story is incoherent, the editing is a mess, the characters are blank slates, the acting is worse than any Razzie Award winners, the cinematography and effects are at amateur level, and just everything about it is so poorly done that it's not even funny, it's just sad. If you find this movie ironically funny, good for you, but you will never hear me laughing at this movie, or even watching it anymore because it's that incomprehensible. Honestly, it would be better if you just slammed your head against a wall for 90 minutes instead of watching this, because at least then you'll leave more of an impact on that wall than Fateful Findings ever left on the history of cinema.

Neil Breen is a director who doesn't care for filmmaking rules, mainly because he doesn't know any of them. You know how movies are supposed to be 'show, don't tell'? Neil Breen tells and tells and tells. Breen doesn't trust our brains to make even the most basic connections. In Breen's universe, a guy who just saw a car accident has to literally say 'I'm a witness!', because otherwise our feeble minds may not understand that complex concept. He writes dialogues like English is not his first language, or even in the top five for that matter.

Because his movies are so surreal, Breen has often been compared to "The Room"'s Tommy Wiseau. The main difference is that lightning only struck once for old Tommy. He hasn't made anything remotely entertaining since 2003. Breen however keeps churning them out, with no difficulties whatsoever. This is a guy who doesn't have to do any effort to stay weird, incomprehensible and because of that, incredibly fascinating.

I'm writing this review for "Fateful Findings", but it could work for any of his movies. They're all pretty much the same. Breen always casts himself as an implausibly perfect being who rids the world of all the evils. The evils are usually found in the big companies, who are driven by greed and don't care about people. I know this because the villains actually have to say that in all his movies. Breen doesn't even know the meaning of subtext, and that's why we all love him so much.

As interesting as his movies are to watch, a making-of would certainly be infinite times better. There are just so many questions that remain unanswered here. How much does he have to pay these beautiful young 'actresses' (models at best) to pretend they're in love with him? Why does a man who's clearly in his 50s keep casting himself as a thirty-something? Why do the characters pause roughly thirty seconds between each line? How do you hack the government on laptops that aren't even on? Why do we have to see Neil Breen semi-nude so often throughout his movies? For a guy who spells our every detail, Breen sure does leave plenty of questions.

Tommy Wiseau and James "Birdemic" Nguyen ended up ruining their charm by becoming self-aware, but I honestly don't see that happening with Breen. To him, there's clearly not a funny moment to be found in any of his movies, and that's why they work: because he takes them so damn seriously while nobody else does. Furthermore, his heart seems to be in the right place. He clearly wants to make a statement about all the injustice in the world, in between showing his abs. I applaud him for that, he's a so-bad-it's-good filmmaker I can really get behind.

Seriously, how many Laptops did he smash in this movie?!?

Fateful Findings in a transmission from the universe of Breem Prime.

Language has evolved in a completely different direction. Characters speak abstractly in bold cryptic announcements, a strange tribal caveman speak. And even the film narrative is in a less evolved. Fateful Findings is a melodrama from a third world country inexplicably out of the Las Vegas desert.

The mystical new-age narrative has an almost primal, indigenous quality. A hacker shaman struggles to tell the "real" truth while always fighting off incredibly beautiful women. He's vaguely mystical himself, an inexplicably successful author and computer hacker who works on a series of turned-off laptops, frequently flipping them and spilling coffee on them in some sort of ritual. Breen also goes to see two psychiatrists, who pretty much tell him he's great and that his decisions are awesome.

The main trio of women are so ridiculously hot the only reaction one could have that it must be an alternate universe. The depressed eastern European wife Emily has a quiet pathos. The friend's blonde wife is stunning but struggles with the dialogue. The friend's teenage daughter, a truly desperate girl. And lastly, the "love of his life", the skinny blonde doctor girl, is also apparently much younger than him despite being older in the childhood flashback. Her main role is to stand there mortified while a very smooth looking looking older man plants sensitive kisses on her lips and cheeks (and get tied up in a van).

At hundred minutes, it rough, took me a few days to get through. I did find, after I got used to the caveman speak dialogue, that it was a sort of sad movie about fulfilling one's potential, failed marriages, true love and personal integrity. Or some kind of alien alien approximation of them.

It's not without it's cryptic appeal, there are a few real laughs and bizarre uses of camera, some baffling edits. A lot of bad movie detail. But it's also kind of a bummer at times.

The climax is a truly bizarre product of a disturbed imagination. But, also kind of satisfying. I almost wish more movies ended that way. Fateful Findings is a dreamlike, new-age look at air conditioned suburban angst of middle aged men and hot trophy wives.