Written by Robert Scucci | Published
In all of his movies, Neil Breen portrays a tragic hero with god-like powers who takes it upon himself to save the world from itself with mysterious, unexplained and often absurd abilities. in 2016 Pass Thru sticks to this formula and makes for a fun watch for fans of foreign filmmaking.
While many Breeniacs like myself can point to the 2005s Down twice and 2012 Sad Findings as his best works, Pass Thru it is not without its charm. But be warned, because it’s one of Breen’s most disjointed pieces in his entire filmography, and that’s saying a lot.
“The message is too powerful to be captured on film.”
Here, we have a creepy floating red dot that serves no real purpose, a tiger that occasionally appears in the Nevada desert for reasons that are never explained, and bean cans littering the area. Corrupt insurance, banks, and media “presidents” expose their corrupt and immoral agendas, but Neil Breen’s Thgil (spelled light), an alien AI life form sent to Earth to make a better place, is here to save the day.
No Double, But We’ll Take It
Like other Breen joints, Pass Thru it’s full of stark desert shots, ramshackle sound design, and preachy monologues about the state of the world and how Neil Breen, in his best Canadian tuxedo, is the only person there to usher in a new age of enlightenment. Without self-satisfaction, we get the chaos of a story that begins with a group of nameless immigrants who are put in the back of a truck and taken to an unknown place by the police who must round them up and take them back to the countries they fled to.
Through Breen’s narration, we learn that he is an AI life form from a distant galaxy sent to Earth specifically to eliminate 300 million “bad guys” in a mass purge. The problem is that with his personality, he becomes a heroin addict who sleeps in the trash when he doesn’t eat canned food in his trailer. He befriends Amanda (Kathy Corpus) and her niece, Kim (Chaize Macklin), who are reluctant to move into his trailer even though he says he is “the future,” after he has neatly packed away his trash to make his home more livable.
Meanwhile, a boy astrologer (Abraham Rodriguez), two girl astrologers (Taylor Sydney and Taylor Johnson), and their wheelchair-bound professor (James D. Smith) head out into the desert in search of a glowing red dot that looks like a broken pixel on your screen, but which appears for a purpose despite that purpose never being properly spelled out.
In a way, all of these different stories come together when Thgil takes over the newscast to inform the rest of the human race that they’re alive, and when he arrives at the mansion to tell various government officials and industrial presidents that they’re corrupt. Soon after, a CGI explosion burns in the background as Neil Breen walks away from the wreckage without looking back.
Not One Of The Classics, But A Place To Go
While Pass Thru a Neil Breen film obviously, it pales in comparison to its predecessor, Sad Findings. That film revolves around corporate espionage, government secrets, and dozens of laptops being destroyed as our hero vows to expose the corruption that runs rampant in this world.
All the same pitfalls of self-importance and disgust in today’s world are still there, though Pass Thru it fails to stick where it sits because there are too many moving parts. For a movie that people like me ardently seek out because it’s terrible in every way imaginable, there’s something distinctly lacking here, and I can’t put my finger on what’s missing.
If Neil Breen were a singer, Pass Thru it will be his breakout album. He has traveled to deserts and distant galaxies by bending space and time as we know many times. This is the last film he shot mainly on location before becoming a master of the green screen with films like this one The Twisted Pair again Cade: Tortured Crossingso what we see here sounds like a pseudo-intelligent creature striving to reach its final form by conventional means. The message is simply too powerful to be captured on film. At least that’s the narrative I’m going with.
If you are a fan of Neil Breen’s work, Pass Thru views are important. Just know that it is not his finest hour. To see what Breen calls “a visionary, revolutionary film that pushes human genres to the limits of controversial, thought-provoking action,” you can read more about it on his website.
