Neil Breen

Neil Breen (born November 23, 1958)[1] is an American independent filmmaker, architect and real estate agent.[2] His films have garnered a cult following for their writing, editing and unique quality.[2][3]

Neil Breen
Breen in 2017
Born (1958-11-23) November 23, 1958
NationalityAmerican
Occupation
  • Filmmaker
  • Architect
  • Real-estate agent
Known for

Life and career

Neil Breen grew up on the East Coast of the United States, and developed an interest in film and filmmaking at an early age. He studied architecture and initially became a licensed architect in California.[4] According to Breen, he also worked as a real-estate agent before moving on to self-finance his own films.[5] He gained a small following after releasing his first film, Double Down. Over the next years, he continued to work as an architect to finance his next film, I Am Here.... Now which became his breakout feature and garnered "a lot of attention." Since then, he has established a reputation as a cult amateur filmmaker.[4]

Film

Breen writes and stars in each of his own films. The characters he portrays hold advanced and often superhuman abilities and use them in grandiose struggles against corrupt forces and institutions.[6] Fateful Findings features Breen as a hacker imbued with supernatural powers by a magical stone he found as a child, who uses his skills to expose government and corporate corruption, while in Double Down he plays a rogue government super-agent. In other films, his protagonist is a god-like, messianic, or otherwise chosen figure; Pass Thru, for example, has Breen playing a messianic entity who arrives from the future to wipe out 300 million "bad people" to usher in a new era of peace. Breen has said that his films have a "sense of social responsibility" and reflect the "mystical or paranormal side of life."[7]

Influence

His first feature film, Double Down, was featured on RedLetterMedia's Best of the Worst online series, whilst Fateful Findings was covered by YourMovieSucksDOTorg, another well-known film critic on YouTube. Since then, Breen's films have been picked up by arthouse theaters and film festivals, including the 2012 "Butt-Numb-A-Thon" and the 2013 Seattle International Film Festival.[2] In Paste Magazine's 2014 list of the 100 best B movies, Breen's film I Am Here.... Now was ranked 21st, with the author noting that he thought Breen would one day earn a place in the "terrible movie hall of fame" alongside Ed Wood and Tommy Wiseau.[8] Breen's third film, Fateful Findings, was compared to Wiseau's The Room by the former film's North American distributor Panorama Entertainment.[6] Breen's fifth feature film, Twisted Pair, was released in 2018.[9]

Filmography

References
  1. Biography for Neil Breen on IMDb
  2. Bell, Josh (February 6, 2014). "Local filmmaker Neil Breen's unique (and terrible) movies earned him a cult following". Las Vegas Weekly. The Greenspun Corporation. Retrieved November 12, 2014.
  3. Galil, Leor (18 December 2018). "In praise of Neil Breen, an auteur who finds new and exciting ways to be bad with every movie he makes". Chicago Reader.
  4. Olson 2018, p. 76.
  5. "Neil Breen". Facebook.
  6. Jones, Alan. "Bad-movie lovers need to meet Neil Breen". The Dissolve. Pitchfork Media. Retrieved November 12, 2014.
  7. Howard, Jason. "An Interview with Director Neil Breen". Influx Magazine. Influx Magazine. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved November 12, 2014.
  8. Vorel, Jim (May 9, 2014). "The 100 Best "B Movies" of All Time". Paste Magazine. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
  9. Rife, Katie (July 24, 2018). "Clear your calendars, Neil Breen has a new movie coming out". The A.V. Club. G/O Media. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
  10. "Double Down (2005)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved April 13, 2020.

Works cited
  • Olson, Christopher J. (2018). 100 Greatest Cult Films. Lanham; Boulder; New York City; London: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1442208223.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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