Neil Breen - the best worst filmmaker

So, I’ve followed Red Letter Media’s YouTube channel for a couple of years now. They watch a lot of movies and they like to review a lot of awful movies as well. Through them I also came across to Neil Breen - a filmmaker out of this world.

I haven’t watched any of his films myself, but I think I’ve seen enough through all the movie reviews on YouTube to say that his works are… something else. That’s the best way I can describe it. Just look at this highlight reel made of his film Twisted Pair to get a sense what his films are like.

Keep in mind, that Neil Breen is the writer, director and also the main character in all of his films.

From his own film making “tutorial” DVDs (which are btw like over five hours altogether and costs you nearly 160 dollars) you can see his production value is obviously low budget, but better than some indie filmmakers. You can see that he tries his best to keep everything as professional as possible; he has paid actors, he (sometimes) has an actual crew, he has the equipment and programs to produce a quality film. (Here's the Red Letter Media's Half in the Bag episode where Mike and Jay dive into that Neil Breen's 5 Film Retrospective DVD, starting at 23:56). But still, the outcomes are not quite there. Or more likely they’re not there at all. They’re all an absurd mess - and that’s what makes them funny.

But I think that’s not what Neil Breen was trying to do in the first place. What information I've gotten from the reviews, Neil is usually acting the alien; a god-like savior of the world with a high intelligence with an important mission (were it perishing horrible world leaders or hacking into secret files with his ten different laptops in the desert). His films are tied in serious topics and themes and you can sense that he tries very hard to make them to make an impact on the audience. With his skills though, he doesn’t succeed. His deeper messages get lost on the way when he absurdly green-screens a stock footage of a tiger behind him with intentions of making an illusion that he has a moment with a real tiger on the spot.

And that’s what I was talking about earlier in my post about Good trash VS Bad trash - when the intentions are to make a serious film or content, it usually ends up being funnier than the content that was made to be "funny" in intentions to make people laugh. His works are now known well online but unfortunate for Breen, it's for the wrong reasons. It's still unknown to me is he actually aware of why he has become more popular online, but it seems he's enjoying it and keeps on making movies after another. Good for him.

This is me, having my daily identity crisis.