Welcome to the first episode / entry of Indie Film Review. This is where we discuss some great and no so great indie short or feature films.

We'll be highlighting some of the best and worse and best of the worst films out there.

For our first outing we're going to review one of the most non-sensical films I have ever seen in theatre from one of the OG "so bad it's sort of good" filmmakers out there: Neil Breen.

The film we'll be reviewing today is his latest "Cade: the tortured crossing" but before we start on that, let's start wiht a little background on Neil Breen.

Who is Neil Breen

Born in 1958, Neil Breen is a true independent filmmaker - someone who operates entirely outside the mainstream film industry. He's written, directed, produced, and often acted in all his films, creating a uniquely personal brand of cinema that has both baffled and fascinated audiences for decades.

Breen's filmography includes works like "Double Down" (2005), "I Am Here.... Now" (2009), and "Twisted Pair" (2018). His films often explore themes of government corruption, technology's impact on humanity, and existential questions - though not always in ways that make immediate sense.

While I'll be critical of Breen's filmmaking choices here (and likely will be in future reviews), I must acknowledge his persistence. Making six full-length feature films is no small feat, especially when those films consistently challenge conventional storytelling and visual techniques.

What is the story of "Cade: the tortured crossing"

Narrative Coherence: If there's one thing that consistently plagues Neil Breen's films, it's narrative coherence. After watching this film multiple times (including a theatrical screening), I'm still not entirely sure what the story is supposed to be - and that seems to be the point.

Plot Summary: "Cade: the tortured crossing" appears to be a sequel to "Twisted Pair," though the connection isn't immediately obvious. The film follows Cade Altair, one of twin brothers who were allegedly taken by aliens or AI (the specifics are never clearly explained) and granted powers while being made more "humanoid."

Main Conflict: In this installment, wealthy Cade decides to fund a mental hospital sight unseen, only to discover it's in terrible condition and being used for gene research on kidnapped teens. He then trains the patients to become "super soldiers" but against whom remains unclear throughout the film.

Structure: The narrative is held together by loose connections between scenes rather than any cohesive plot structure. It's less a story and more a series of bizarre vignettes that occasionally reference each other without ever forming a complete picture.

What's wrong with this film?

What isn't wrong with this film would be a better question.

The visuals - A Technical Nightmare

Nintey percent of the film is shot on a green screen alcove and then very poorly comped into static images or stock footage with no consideration of matching the production shots with the green screen scene they are being comped in. The other ten percent is literally just stoock footage that doesn't match the "quality" of the rest of the film.

The actors are all lit very flat with no shadows no matter what the background scene they are being comped into (with only one or two scenes where a poor attempt at lighting the actors based on the scene was done).

The shots are also not graded in a way to make the actors match the plates with black levels not matching and with a complete lack of contact shadows between the actor and the background.

Some of the keying is so badly done that parts of the actors are transparent (probably due to spill / bounce of green light from the green screen floor), something that could easily have been corrected with a bit of care and attention.

All the shots are shot static with no camera motion and, while I normally recommend this for beginner filmmakers making their first few short films (learn angles, directing, lighting and audio before adding camera movement to the mix), this is Breen's 6th FEATURE film.

Some effort was made to match the motion of the actors to the image so we know that the background elements were chosen before filming ... patients are lying in dentist's chairs or on beds mostly correctly, actors walk up real stairs that mostly match the stairs in the background plate for example so we know that they knew what scene the actors would be comped into so issues with lighting and color grading are even more perplexing.

A lot of these visuals harken back to the old Full-motion video (FMV) games of the 80's like "Night Trap" and "Phantasmagoria" but done even less competently than even those.

There is a completely incomprehensible scene where Neil "fights" a CGI white tiger. The CGI is on par with Playstation 2 graphics but here we get to peek a bit behind the curtain as Emily Brixey did an interview with Trash Movies Kings about the animation.

The issue here is that these visuals are just as bad, if not worse, than visuals in Neil's older films showing a complete lack of growth on the technical aspects of filmmaking and an apprent un-willingness to do as a proper dirtector would and hire people with those technical skills except in some of the most extreme situations like the CGI tiger fight.

The dialogue

Oh boy! The dialogue. I'm not talking about the acting, we'll cover that in a bit, but the actual lines that Neil gave his actors to say. Everything is repeated 3 or 4 times through the entire film and doesn't sound like anything that a normal human being would say.

Cade is in the mental hospital for the first time and approaches a doctor.

Cade: "What the hell is going on here?"

Doctor: "We're doing the best we can. We're trying! We're trying!"

Cade: "That's not good enough!"

Cade get's very close to the doctor and whispers in her ear "This is not acceptable. This is my money, I'm counting on you to make it right."

20 minutes later ... at a fancy party with the first sentence in the scene

Doctor to Cade: "We're doing the best we can. Corporate is in charge of the work and the money.

Cade: "That's not good enough. It's my damn money."

And then the rest of the guests dialogue is "As [insert my job title here] I [state my motivation here]." even when speaking to people who should know who they are. Here are some examples:

• "As [an officer of the law], [I'm very concerned about the safety and well being of all our citizens]."
• "Well, as [a member of the corporation] I assure you that [we take our research very seriously]."
• "Well, as [the director of the hospital] I can assure you that [the wellfare of our patients is our number one priority]."
• "As [a police officer] [the health and safety of the patients is of the upmost importance]."

This is all in ONE SCENE and that last line is said by someone who earlier was identified as someone from child protection services, not a police officer or a detective as he is listed in the credits.

This is probably done because Neil doesn't know how to introduce any of his characters organically and so feels the need to TELL us who these people are otherwise, how would we know?!? He has no understanding of "show, don't tell" or how to do GOOD exposition and is a trend going back all the way to Neil's first film.

This is a recuring issue with all of Neil's films.

Other amazing lines of dialogue include:

• "He has become our financial benefactor for the remodel of our hospital. His commitment to our hospital is an amazing gesture."
• "They are ... our heroes. I, WE will never let them down."
• "I am the dream of these things ... THEY are the dream of these things."
• "Damn! We need to make this an even fight!"
• "I AM the winged warrior."
• "Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all of us."

Don't worry, you didn't have a stroke ... that just made no sense at all.

The acting

The acting in this movie, like in all Neil BReen movies is absolutely terrible. Some of this comes from Neil casting budding actors or non actors into roles but I personally think most of the issue here comes from the directing. It's not that some of the actors are bad ... they are all equally bad in exactly the same way and that tells me that this comes down to direction.

This is especially problematic for new or aspiring acotors who might have been hoping to use this as part of their reel (they should have known better looking at Neil's past works).

The plot / story

There is a weird "side plot" between a doctor constantly yelling at an intern or assistant that culminates with the assistant murdering the doctor by awkwardly holding his shoulders ... I mean, it has NO PLOT RELEVANCE!

The rest of the story is also completely incomprehensible. It's just a series of barely connected events with no explanation:

• How does Neil summon a sword?
• How did that one patient grow wings?
• When he rescued the kidnapping victims why dind't he interogate the kidnappers to find out what was going on?
• Why didn't the main nurse recognise him in the woods?
• What the heck was that dance number with the ghosts?
• Who was that animorph white tiger lady and why could she change into a tiger and what relevance did she have to the story?

Editing and flow

The enitre film could be pruned down from the hour and forty minutes runtime to probably 30 minutes once you remove all the strange un-necessary scenes and /or cut the weird dead time that was left in some scenes as they linger far too long on many shots.

There are a ton of editing problems like missing frames, terribly comped fottage, no contact shadows, shots that linger for far too long.

If it's so bad, why should I watch it?

That's a valid question. As a fan of bad movies, even I have some trouble recomending watching this one. I did enjoy the viewing experience the first time I saw it but that was in a theatre setting wiht a bunch of like minded individuals and in that setting it works but unless you are a fan of the "So bad it's good" style movies or a Neil Breen completionist ... it's hard to recomend this movie.

Considering this is Neil's 6th FEATURE film you would think that he would have evolved as a filmmaker but he seems to have regressed even more, now was this movie made this was pruposefully to captialize on the "So bad it's good" scene or is this just Neil Breen being completely incompetent as a filmmaker? We won't know unless Neil actually comes out and tells us himself.

Some of the issues with this film like it being shot ENTIRELY on green screen can be chalked up to the COVID 19 pandemic and the restrictions that caused on the whole indistry but the incompetence of the execution is mind boggling and doesn't explain or excuse the terrible direction, editing and the underlying issues with the story's premise.