Fateful Findings

OTTAWA PREMIERE

Written, produced, directed by and starring Neil Breen, this “paranormal thriller where a computer hacker exposes worldwide secrets” is destined to be the next true cult classic.

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Neil Breen is another poor schmo who has thrown his time and his money — not to mention his heart — into a movie that is at once demented and laughable.

It’s called Fateful Findings, directed by, written by and starring Neil Breen, and it has been loosed into a world that loves deliciously inept failures: It’s a mock-along, something to hoot at during midnight screenings, a cri de coeur whose very sincerity makes it fodder for smart-ass revelry.

Fateful Findings has been hailed as the new The Room, Tommy Wiseau’s cult hit of love and betrayal.

But Breen, for all his self-delusion, lacks Wiseau’s air of cracked otherworldliness, the feeling that he’s an alien vampire trying to adjust to our Earthling ways.

On the other hand, there’s a fine line between “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!”, the signature line in The Room’s fractured melodrama, and “No more books!,” the angry declaration of Dylan (Breen), the wonderfully improbable hero — writer, new-age lover, computer wizard, righter of wrongs — of Fateful Findings.

We meet Dylan in an introductory episode as a young boy who discovers a treasure in the woods: a magical black cube hidden under a mushroom.

A wisp of special-effects smoke blows across the frame, alerting us to the wonders to come, and pan flute music — a sort of Zamfir retrospective — reinforces the strange, ethereal mood.

Like much in Fateful Findings it has nothing to do with anything, but still …

Next, Dylan is grown up enough to be played by Breen, who looks to be in his 50s but casts himself as the contemporary and love interest of much younger, attractive women.

This would be one good reason for him to make this movie. I’ll think of another one in a minute.

Dylan spends a lot of time at a bank of computers, none of which is ever turned on, researching the evils of government and business.

“I’m going to continue hacking into these government systems to see what I can find out,” he says, and the answer (spoiler alert!) turns out to be cheating, lying, corruption, and hypocrisy “on a massive scale.”

His findings will change the world as we know it, and it’s safe to say you’ve never seen anything like the climax to Fateful Findings.

Don’t use up all your derision on the first part of the movie, because you’ll need it at the end.