Fateful Findings (2013)

This movie is bad. If you think it's going to be a quality film with good acting, editing, or plot, you're going to be sorely disappointed. However, this movie can entertaining. I watched it in a group, and it had us laughing throughout. It's a movie that should be watched knowing it will make no sense most of the time. A one point, a glass of wine spills. Next shot, it hasn't spilled. Then it has. The main character has a girl when they are both around eight. They meet again, later. He looks to be in his late 50s; she is in her late 20s. The dialogue is terrible. There is no plot and a ton of half-finished subplots. I had a good time watching this movie, even though it is a terrible movie. We made fun of it the whole time. Is it so bad, it's good? Maybe. Just know what you're getting into.

Awful movies exist everywhere. Each one is released under different circumstances. Some are produced to intentionally be bad, while other times they just come across bad, but never wanted to be interpreted that way. The ones that are purposefully made to be horrible are made by filmmakers and studios who are just looking to make a cheap cash-in no matter how terrible the end result is. The best example many people might think of, that comes close to those descriptions would be either The Asylum or Uwe Boll. And then there are people like Tommy Wiseau or the man who made this movie, Neil Breen. It may be hard to believe but these two guys have a lot in common when it comes to how much they think they are a gift to the world. Both have a never ending ego that propels them to continue making their movies no matter what others say. They truly think their work is a high art that is at the same level as many of the other critically acclaimed films that have been released. Or so they think. As bad as this is, it is worth it.Crediting himself to almost every single film crew position available, Neil Breen has taken on more roles than other thespian in existence. This is also probably why his film makes practically no sense. Neil Breen plays Dylan, a man who once found the love of his life before he hit his teens. Together, he and his then love Leah (Jennifer Autry) discover a magic token. Skip decades later and Dylan still holds this thing dear to him. Even after getting into a serious car accident. His current girlfriend Emily (Klara Landrat) is a struggling drug addict and a neighboring family is having their own strained relationships next door. Jim (David Silva) and Amy (Victoria Vivieros) have differing motives. Amy wants to relax because her job is hard and Jim wants to fornicate, mostly because he's always drunk. Plus Amy's stepdaughter Aly (Danielle Andrade) has to deal with their bickering. All the while Dylan has found a way of hacking into corporate systems that contain secrets and suffering from paranormal headaches.Everything is about as fragmented as it gets. The writing is like trying to put a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn't work. What Breen did here was try to make a movie that have every single genre in its story. As a result, the play out is generic and feels alien. There are several unfinished subplots mainly because nothing is done with them to begin with. Throughout the running time there's a character in black that goes around walking from place to place and it is never revealed who they are, what they want, what they represent, etc. The subplots themselves don't exactly fit together either in any smooth way. The Jim and Amy couple argue to no end, but have no impact on Dylan or Emily in development. So why bother including them? Also the stepdaughter has a sequence where she waltzes into Dylan's house naked to arouse him, only to be sent away by Dylan. And the significance of this scene was? If it's not going to go anywhere, why include it in the script? Breen's storytelling is like a maze.Later on Dylan meets Leah again all grown up but for the most contrived reason, being that one had written in a notebook way back and held onto it for years. Really? Let's not forget the acting from the cast or the dialog to boot. Wow is this treasure trove of people who are not invested in the project they are making. Everyone from the top down can't deliver a line in any form that sounds natural or believable. What probably aided the deliveries to be so bad was due to how bad the lines are written. Some conversations don't even relate to one another, making the association incoherent. There are only a few redeeming qualities to this horrendous film. Of the cast, the only actor who stands out is Neil Breen and not because he's the best actor. Far from it. What makes his performance so amazing is because of how he has control over this whole thing, stars in it and can't even be a leading man. No emotion is put into his lines; everything is monotone. And this guy thinks he is making mainstream movies? What a laugh.And that's by far the strongest highlight. It is because of Breen's emotionally void showing is what makes this viewing experience so funny. The main genre this film takes place in is a fantasy, science fiction thriller. Yet comes off like a comedy because of Breen. And this isn't his only stinker. Breen made two other films before this and basically gave the same kind of product. The two films were Double Down (2005) and I Am Here...Now (2009). The next best thing to Breen's acting is the cinematography handled by John Mastrogiacomo. Mastrogiacomo also has one other credit, which was to Breen's I Am Here...Now (2009). For what it's worth Mastrogiacomo gets some pretty background shots of the desert. Much of that is clear and vivid in its display. Interior shots are mostly okay but could use some improvement. The music was also adequate but that's probably because the music was just stock audio. There's no way Breen was a music director like he so proudly credits himself at the end. Yeah OK.Recommendation wise, if you don't like indie or amateur films in general stay away. But if you're interested in seeing how unbelievable a guy like Neil Breen can be, now's the time. The camera-work and music might be okay, but don't expect anything else to tell an understandable story whatsoever. The actors don't even know what they're doing in it.

This is, along with Wiseau's "The Room," one of the more entertaining movies of all time, but Wiseau hasn't produced anything substantial since his magnum opus, while Breen is the gift that keeps on giving. After "Double Down" and "I Am Here .... Now," it's a pleasant surprise that Breen doesn't appear to have gone the way of James Nguyen, purposely making bad movies in order to cash in on his previous, well-deserved success. Breen is still apparently unaware, and that is a great thing.In the tradition of bad movies, it fails on every possible level, but in the tradition of good-bad movies, it fails on every possible level in the best way it possibly could have.The plot is nonsensical and impossible to understand. Character motivations make no sense at all, and the movie is full of random metaphors that may or may not mean anything.Breen's age relative to a particular actress makes even the casting more than questionable in the context of the film.I can't imagine how the acting could have been made worse. It seems like something out of a porno.It's all part of the charm. Get some friends together and drink a bit.

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.