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I never know how to rate these types of films. You know... the so- bad-they're-good camp classics. The sort of films that are objectively so terrible in virtually every aspect, they suddenly become endlessly watchable and entertaining as a result. Enjoyable in the most ironic and subversive of ways. On one hand, there's the impulse to rate it based not on its quality, but rather on entertainment value. Then there's the thought that perhaps you should rate it only on its quality as a film while noting that it might still be worth seeing despite your low mark.
Me? Well, frankly I think there's no other way to vote for writer/director/editor/star Neil Breen's camp-classic "Fateful Findings" than to score it based on it's impeccable and constant high levels of entertainment. Everything about this film is so misjudged, so mind-boggling and so flat-out wrong that you'll be howling with laughter from the first line of dialog through the incompetent climax. This isn't just any other bad film... this is pure "Breen-ius" from start-to-finish and is right up there with the likes of "Birdemic" and "The Room" as one of the finest unintentionally-comedic camp classics ever made.
For the uninitiated, Neil Breen is an independent actor and filmmaker who for the past ten-or-so years has built a career out of self-producing and self-distributing a string of low-budget indie thrillers starring himself as the various leads. However, much like the cult god and Master of Disaster himself Tommy Wiseau, Breen... well, he just doesn't "get" how to make a movie. He seems to understand that movies have characters and story lines and involve the use of a camera and editing to put together a visual story... but that's about it. He doesn't seem to grasp things such as character development or motivation. He can't wrap his head around pacing or structure. His dialog is as robotic as it comes. And his sense of visual direction and image composition seems pretty much on par with a first-year middle school video-production class student. Breen also thinks very highly of himself, which is one of the first things you'll notice in each of his films! My lord, does Breen have a weird fetish for self-promotion!
"Fateful Findings" is one of his best (or rather "best-worst") works in my humble opinion. While some of his other films like "Double Down" or "Pass Thru" have had a greater leaning towards misguided action and intrigue, "Findings" is a straight-up Sci-Fi/Fantasy drama that is predicated more heavily on character and story... and it is wonderfully ridiculous.
Breen stars as "Dylan", a famous author (because of course Breen's character has to be popular and beloved) who as a young boy discovered a magical stone underneath a magical vanishing mushroom in the magical forest with his childhood sweetheart on a magical day. (And the film likes to remind us repeatedly just how magically magical this magical day was... my god, was it magical!) Years later, he's in a car accident, but is miraculously saved by the stone's power. And then... a series of barely tenuously-connected scenes plays out for the next 90 minutes, as Dylan hacks government files, his wife deals with her drug habits, his best-friend's teenaged daughter tries to sleep with him, he re-unites with his childhood squeeze and other assorted and inexplicable nonsense plays out. There's also a murder subplot in there somewhere, but the film keeps forgetting about it.
That's it. That's the plot. And it is amazing.
It's like the script was written backwards. Key point-points play out completely without establishment, and then are established later on. Character-arcs are resolved before they even begin. Events in the film blatantly contradict what came before. And the central storyline is only touched-on in infrequent and puzzling scenes. The camera-work is bizarre and sometimes unsettling, with a strange penchant to focus on character's feet instead of their faces. There's a lot of genuinely uncomfortable filler inserted constantly, such as an uproariously funny moment where we see Dylan awkwardly eating a salad while another character watches him and smiles like it's the greatest thing they've seen. And the effects work is extraordinary in how cheap it comes across.
Everything about this film is so wrong... and so right at the same time. Neil Breen's "Fateful Findings" is just brilliant in its insanity and constantly entertaining in its poor quality. While it might not be for the reasons he's intended, Breen has crafted a new classic with this film. A classic of unintentional comedy. It's well-worth seeking out for fans of low-budget B-movie schlock and those of us who see the value in bad movies. Take it from me, Breen is destined to become a legend in the world of film! And his movies are definitely going down in cinematic history.
For the constant (and I do mean "constant") laughs, "Fateful Findings" easily earns a perfect 10.
score 10/10
TedStixonAKAMaximumMadness 23 January 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3625740/ |
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28-2-2021 00:07:17