Fateful Findings is a terrible movie. Just awful! Dialogue is stilted, awkwardly delivered and, more often than not, adds absolutely nothing to the sparse, yet strangely convoluted, plot. Performances are either mumbled or roared, depending on the level of community theater experience cast members have. The camera is primarily stuck to a tripod in locations that are, at best, bad. Lighting is consistently flat and all interiors have been fairly obviously filmed in different rooms of the same location. Prop laptops are destroyed in a variety of ways, over and over. Fake blood is utilized in, dare I say, sexy ways. Stock footage is utilized to a degree that would make Ed Wood blanch. Writer/director/real estate developer Neil Breen shouldn’t be making movies. Fateful Findings is his third movie, and it is a colossal turkey. A dud! A lump! A piece of shit!! That being said...Fateful Findings is a fantastic movie. Just goddamn wonderful! It is one of the recent epitomes of the “so bad it’s good” genre of accidental brilliance, with the sagging, sadly frequently nude, Breen proudly standing at its helm, chin up, bare chest puffed out. Alternately a mystical tale of lost and found love, drug and alcohol fueled chamber drama and exceedingly vague government conspiracy hacker/supernatural thriller (each of these disparate plot lines doggedly refuses to mesh with the other), Fateful Findings simply must be seen to be believed. The uniting factor of this hilariously awful venture is Neil Breen himself, whose name dominates more than half of the end credits (with the other half largely made up of Breen aliases.) Thrill as he stars as Dylan, the brilliant writer/hacker/magically revived victim of a hit and run! Marvel at his stringy, frequently exposed, very middle-aged torso and unwaveringly squinty face that betrays absolutely no emotion... ever! Stare in wonder as he repeats lines of dialogue two, sometimes three times for emphasis, with no change in tone or resonance! Marvel in amazement as our master hacker develops magical powers than enable him to pass through unopened locked doors. Question the reasoning behind placing a hospital breathing tube on top of a thick layer of bandages. Delight in the plight of his pill-poppin’ wife, until she (spoiler alert?!) dies, is never mentioned again, and quickly replaced by Dylan’s crush from third grade, played by an actress noticeably half his age.
I don’t know Neil Breen, and he’s notoriously cagey when interviewed, thus it would be unfair to judge his off-camera personality. However, his filmography indicates that he may, perhaps, be a deluded egomaniac with a fundamental misunderstanding of film language and the desire to portray himself in an endlessly favorable light. It’s possible that, in his day-to-day, Neil Breen is a nice, humble, down to earth guy who just plays a hero on TV and, in his down time, enjoys grilling hot dogs and nosing around garage sales. Who knows? What I do know is that Fateful Findings, his alliteratively titled masterwork, has the power and potential to stand the test of time. It rambles and stumbles, it never makes even the remotest bit of sense, and it ends with, what can only be described as, a hilarious mass suicide! God bless Fateful Findings, and God bless Neil Breen
Commenti