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After hearing about the works of Neil Breen for months, I just had to check them out. From various clips and reviews, one can easily see that he has no idea how to make a movie yet he treats his films as painfully serious masterpieces, making for loads of unintentional comedy and putting him in the esteemed company of clueless auteurs such as Tommy Wiseau and Sam Mraovich.
Actually, scratch that. Neil Breen is worse than Wiseau and Mraovich. Tommy Wiseau had a few halfway decent actors, a competent crew, and decent equipment while Sam Mraovich at least had enough sense to show his characters' faces. Breen can't even do that.
By far the most memorable aspect of "Fateful Findings" is that its plot has many things happening, but yet nothing happens. The main character played by Breen finds a magic rock as a child then watches his childhood sweetheart move away. As an adult (50 years later, going by the looks of Breen's leathery face) he gets hit by a car and then is healed by the rock which he just happened to have. He goes home and decides to dedicate himself to "hacking the most secret government corporate secrets" on laptops that are never on and get repeatedly tossed around his office. These government corporate secrets are so secret that we never learn what they are, even when he exposes them in the absolutely bonkers climax.
He also has a pill-popping wife (who is willing to snatch his pills from the toilet), and an alcoholic friend trapped in a sexless marriage with a pretty teenage daughter who inexplicably keeps coming on to Breen. Said alcoholic friend is also later murdered by his wife for no real reason. The only thing I mentioned that has any bearing on the plot is perhaps the wife's addiction, seeing as how she overdoses just in time for Breen to hook back up with his childhood sweetheart, who seems to have aged at about half the rate of Breen. From there, Leah, the childhood girlfriend, gets abducted and he has to save her.
The cluttered plot might sound a bit ordinary if not for the vague supernatural elements. There are characters who wander around then vanish, a gigantic tome whose contents aren't revealed and appears at random, and scenes of a naked Neil Breen(ick) sitting in a room lined in trash bags that I think is supposed to represent him being inside the magic rock. Near the end he suddenly gains the power to literally walk through walls to save his girlfriend from her kidnappers.
The plot also shows that Breen doesn't seem to understand how the world works. His friend gets murdered by his wife and framed as suicide and nobody investigates. His girlfriend gets kidnapped but the kidnapper conveniently drops directions to where he's taking her. His therapy sessions would make Frasier Crane look legit. He seems to think that exposing high-level corruption will compel government and business officials to confess and commit public suicide to a cheering crowd in a delightfully inane ending that is one of the most unintentionally funny scenes ever captured on film.
Breen's directing is as clueless as his writing. To avoid film permits he often points the camera skyward at people's faces and downward at their feet. In the barbecue scene, he films characters from the neck down as they knock things over rather than zoom out. He films a two-way phone conversation with only one person talking. When his friend is shot by his wife, he cuts to the falling shell rather than have the actor use a squib. Adding to the hilariousness of the climax, he chooses a bad green screen of a nondescript government-like building as a backdrop. He also seems to be madly in love with his video software's fade effect as something, or someone, fades out on average every five minutes.
He has no concept of editing either. He lets a hospital scene linger just long enough to show his butt. He chooses not to reshoot or cut down a scene where the teenage daughter looks right into the camera in obvious frustration. He decides to film himself eating a plate of spinach and later shows said plate falling off a bookshelf. A scene where he's supposedly too weak to lift a coffee cup goes on forever as does a scene where he and his wife rip each other's clothes off.
The scenes have no sense of flow either. The friend's wife goes from being mad about his drinking to shooting him dead in the next scene. There are many unexpected cutaways to a naked trashbag room scene, shots of the ancient tome, ten second therapy sessions, and shots of a largely unseen man-in-black stalking about and then fading away. One scene even manages to combine a fade WITH a ten-second therapy session.
The cringeworthy acting is no different from the average Neil Breen film. The wife sounds half asleep when delivering her lines, the best friend has apparently never been drunk as he has no idea how to act it, his wife hams it up worse than a high school play, and the daughter is the absolute worst as she emotes even less than Breen. Seriously, she treats her dad's murder like she didn't get cheese on her burger.
I really wish I could talk more about this movie because there is so much wrong with it. It's a near perfect storm of bad movie making: it takes itself too seriously, nobody is self-aware, and it has a uncharismatic, unattractive lead who thinks just the opposite. The saddest part is that from what I've seen, I think this might be his least nonsensical movie.
One positive thing I will say for it is that it sure ain't predictable.
score 1/10
allexand 22 November 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3865538/ |
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28-2-2021 00:07:15