YMMV / Neil Breen

• Accidental Innuendo: The title of the film Twisted Pair refers to the identical twins who serve as the movie's protagonists. Many fans have noted that it sounds more like the aftermath of a particularly gnarly Groin Attack.
• Anvilicious: The mere concept of subtlety seems to be a foreign notion to Neil, since all of his films deliver their messages in the most obvious and heavy-handed manner possible. Nature is good, most humans are irredeemably evil (unless they're played by Neil Breen), doubly so for those Obviously Evil corporate executives and government officials, who are so corrupt that horribly murdering them in the thousands is entirely justified.
• Awesome Ego: Breen's films are heavily Anvilicious as mentioned above and all of his films are basically vanity projects...but his quirky attitude and love for the film craft just makes him look like this.
• Broken Base: Is Breen self-aware about his reputation, and are his later films a deliberate attempt to play up his style to his ironic fanbase? If so, whether that's a good thing or not is also a topic of debate.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The endings to many of Neil's movies are supposedly meant to be interpreted in a positive light, despite them ultimately resolving nothing and/or actually making things far worse than they already are.
  • I Am Here....Now ends with neither Amber nor Cindy managing to change their life conditions in any significant way. Both are still out of a job with no means of supporting themselves, and Cindy gets the added pressure of having a complete stranger foisted onto her and her child by The Being without her having any say in the matter. At the end, The Being departs Earth with an ultimatum, despite having done nothing to change humanity for the better outside of wiping out one small-time local gang. Corruption will still be rampant, and actual renewable energy innovations will still be suppressed, thus painting a very bleak picture of a possible future considering The Being's threat of destroying everything should mankind not change.
  • Near the conclusion of Pass Thru, Thgil manages to eliminate most of the governing bodies of nations worldwide or other organizations of authority, supposedly to purge the world of political corruption. It doesn't take a genius to know such a power vacuum would actually give rise to chaos and anarchy instead of positive reorganization, and like in I Am Here....Now, the protagonist departs without having done anything to change the world for the better but still finds the time for Anvilicious moral posturing, and expressing anger and disappointment at the humanity that he ultimately took no part in saving despite his godlike powers.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Neil Breen deliberately leaves any possible symbolism in his movie unexplained and encourages the audience to come up with their own interpretations. Taken to ridiculous extremes in I Am Here.... Now where Neil Breen plays Cyborg Space Zombie Jesus who apparently travels while crucified to a cross.
• He Really Can Act: For how wooden his acting can be, Neil has one or two rare moments where it looks like he's actually trying. Case in point is the scene in Fateful Findings where his character Dylan finds his wife's dead body after she commits suicide. Here, Dylan cradles her body and is on the verge of tears while only saying a few words at most. Compare this to an earlier scene where he finds his friend Jim dead of apparent suicide and acts as if he's disappointed in him rather than saddened by his bloody death.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Breen's character in Pass Thru eliminates 5% of the human race (reducing them to dust, to boot) for what he claims to be the greater good. Apparently, Thanos thought he was onto something, and just needed to scale it up by a factor of ten.
• Memetic Mutation: He is in essence this, but there are a few particularly notable ways this is.
  • The constant presence of laptops in his films (which are always off) has led to jokes that he buys broken laptops just to simply smash them.
  • Dylan's rather "I'm not mad, just disappointed" reaction to Jim's death in Fateful Findings.
    Dylan: [Deadpan] I can't believe you committed suicide. I cannot believe you committed suicide. How could you have done this, how could you have committed suicide?
  • The President of the Bank, also from Fateful Findings. No, his title isn't any more specific than that.
  • "Isn't that corrupt?" from Pass Thru, for embodying Breen's style in its dull yet earnest delivery and all-around lack of subtlety. (Thgil, the film's protagonist, says it having gatecrashed a party for a group of unsavory corporate executive types who he finds openly boasting about their misdeeds.) Mention anything immoral that any character does in his canon on a public forum and expect at least one person to respond with this.
  • Twisted Pair has Cale torturing chained-up businessmen in a garage somewhere by shooting them in random body parts... and their only reaction being shot is wincing.
• Nausea Fuel: The blood in Fateful Findings looks rather too convincing for comfort.
• So Bad, It's Good: Arguably one of the biggest reasons Breen is very much liked by movie fans and internet film critics: His films are so laughably bad, but one can't help but find them enjoyable for those exact reasons. Breen's love for the art also helps as well, showing that he makes films just because he loves film production despite at times showing them to be vanity projects.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • From basic dissolves to terrible compositing to copious amounts of the least convincing blood in all of cinema, it's all here.
  • One that deserves special mention: on several occasions in I Am Here....Now, the Being reveals his true appearance: an impossibly bad zombie mask.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • You could consider Breen to be a present-day Ed Wood. Both made films that most would say are "terrible", but there are some who'd find their films endearing and would glowingly love their optimism for making movies simply because they loved making them. The only sliding difference is Breen also has his career as an architect and real-estate agent as a secondary balance career, while Ed Wood unfortunately didn't.
  • He also has similarities to Tom Laughlin, director and star of Billy Jack. Both made independent films with themselves in the lead, both established cult followings and both share a similar worldview and both are known for their intense sincerity in their work. However, Laughlin's films were known for being considerably more well-made and far more successful for a time while Breen has never achieved much attention outside the independent circuit and his largely ironic fanbase.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Neil could very well be the trope codifier as he is famous for making utterly ridiculous, low-budget films and treating them with absolute sincerity, no matter the content or quality. It's arguably the biggest reason he has a devout fandom, with many people who enjoy mocking his films genuinely respecting his commitment and passion at the same time.

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