By Nicole Veneto

Simply put, there’s nothing (and no one) out there quite like what Neil Breen is putting out into the world, and for that alone, we should be grateful.

Neil Breen contemplates the state of the United States’ mental healthcare system via gree nscreen in Cade: The Tortured Crossing. Photo: Neil Breen Films LLC

Some say that Neil Breen is a man — an architect and former Las Vegas real-estate agent who now makes batshit crazy and near-incomprehensible films written, directed, and starring himself, often as some kind of black-tank-top-wearing badass exposing corporate corruption/conspiratorial government secrets or a God-like entity sent to Earth to improve the human condition/awkwardly kiss actresses recruited from Craigslist. Others, including me, believe that Breen is an alien shapeshifter in the skin of a 60-something-year-old man hailing from the same strange planet as Tommy Wiseau. Unlike Tommy, however, we know how Breen amassed the fortune he drew on to make “so bad it’s good” classics like Double Down, Pass-Thru, and his “what the fuck?” magnum-opus, Fateful Findings. As with most people, Breen came to my attention through a number of YouTube film critics, mainly RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst web series, where Breen has become something of a patron saint for hilariously bad vanity projects that frequently delve into the sort of weird uncle crankery that would get you put on a government watchlist. Hence RedLetterMedia’s infamous reaction to Pass-Thru (i.e., the one where Breen pulls a Thanos and magically genocides millions of “bad people” from the planet): “All eyes on Breen.”

In the time it took for fellow bad movie auteur Tommy Wiseau to make his follow-up to The Room, Breen made five “films” (technically six if you count his five-hour-long retrospective documentary on his own movies), all of which you can purchase through his website. You will receive a personally printed DVD copy in a clear CD case months after you ordered it. I know this firsthand because I bought a copy of Pass-Thru for a friend’s birthday several years ago. (Prolonged delay in shipping aside, it’s probably the best gift I’ve ever given someone.) Breen’s latest offering, Cade: The Tortured Crossing, is a sequel to 2018’s Twisted Pair, wherein he plays two AI enhanced alien(?) twin brothers named Cade and Cale Altair — the former a noble rich man who moonlights as a superhero, and the latter a troubled and destitute vagrant in a hoodie and hilariously fake glued on facial hair. Whereas Breen’s prior features were all self-released and self-distributed, Cade: The Tortured Crossing is receiving a limited theatrical run from Drafthouse Films across the nation, and by god if I was going to pass up the opportunity to see a Breen movie in an actual movie theater.

Now here’s the thing: I have literally no idea what happened in Cade: The Tortured Crossing. I assure you that it has absolutely nothing to do with the two cocktails I drank at the newly opened Boston Alamo Drafthouse clouding my cognition (if anything, being slightly buzzed is a prerequisite to watching a Breen vehicle). I can barely even tell you what happened in Twisted Pair for that matter — beyond this memorable scene I often quote under my breath at work. There’s stuff about human trafficking and experimentation happening at a derelict mental hospital that the uber-wealthy Cade has donated millions of dollars to. Boy, is he miffed that his patronage is being siphoned away by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who put profits before people. Presumably, this is why Cade, coming on like he’s Professor Xavier, begins training some of the mental hospital’s patients into becoming mystical warriors who do bad karate. Cale also resurfaces in his musty black hoodie and fake beard trying to abduct the mental hospital’s patients for said human experimentation for reasons that are not once explained whatsoever. Oh, and did I mention the entire thing is shot in front of a green screen? Because it is.

What I can tell you about Cade: The Tortured Crossing is that it’s probably the hardest I’ve laughed with/at a movie all year. When I wasn’t absolutely bewildered by what was supposed to be happening on screen, I was maniacally cackling in the theater like DeNiro in Cape Fear. I heard murmurings on the internet that Breen’s finally become self-aware of his own public image, wise to the fact that his movies are insane fever dreams. (Breen cites a very real and very hilarious scene where he fist-fights a CGI tiger that turns into a woman wearing a Spirit of Halloween Greek goddess costume.) The secret sauce that makes a terrible movie “so bad it’s good” is in its earnestness — the total lack of awareness that what is being made is complete and utter shit and not, say, the serious Tennesse Williams-inspired relationship drama Tommy Wiseau set out to make with The Room. Bad movies are only as good as the intentions behind them. This is precisely why Asylum mockbusters and Sharknado movies aren’t any fun the way something like Miami Connection or Dangerous Men are.

Double trouble? A scene from Cade: The Tortured Crossing. Photo: Neil Breen Films LLC

But whether or not Breen is finally attuned to the fact that he’s the modern day Ed Wood  and may now be leaning into that reputation is irrelevant to me. Breen is an outsider artist in the truest and purest sense of the term, possessing a vision so singular it cannot be replicated by anyone else. For what Breen lacks in technical know-how and a fundamental understanding of filmmaking as an art form he more than makes up for with the sheer craziness of his ideas and the way he goes about executing them. Outsider artists are usually defined by either a lack of formal artistic training or a lack of traditional resources. For all of Breen’s accumulated real estate wealth, all his films are painfully low-budget endeavors that feel like something Adult Swim would air at four in the morning. The dialogue is awkward and stilted, the actors hired off of Craigslist are all uniformly terrible, the props come courtesy of Party City, and the stock visual effects look like something out of a mobile game that will install malware onto your phone. And yet, in spite of it all (or rather, because of it), Cade is the sort of work that could only come from the twisted, deranged mind of a single individual. Breen does literally everything himself, including the catering.

So, is Cade: The Tortured Crossing a “good” movie? By all definitions of “good” cinema, no, it isn’t. And that’s exactly why I cannot recommend it enough. Breen answers to nobody but himself. Unlike the long string of failing franchise blockbusters 2023 has delivered to us, his movies are completely untainted by misguided producers’ notes or desperate studio intervention. Simply put, there’s nothing (and no one) out there quite like what Neil Breen is putting out into the world, and for that alone, we should be grateful.

Nicole Veneto graduated from Brandeis University with an MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, concentrating on feminist media studies. Her writing has been featured in MAI Feminism & Visual Culture, Film Matters Magazine, and Boston University’s Hoochie Reader. She’s the co-host of the podcast Marvelous! Or, the Death of Cinema. You can follow her on Letterboxd and her podcast on Twitter @MarvelousDeath.