#713 – Cade: The Tortured Crossing (2023)

Cade: The Tortured Crossing (2023)

Film review #713

Director: Neil Breen

SYNOPSIS: Billionaire super hero secret agent/Jesus allegory Cade donates some money to a mental hospital in disrepair. His aim is to secretly help the young inmates become warriors to fight evil. Cade’s twin brother Cale is back, and tries to abduct the patients for his own experiments however…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Cade: The Tortured Crossing is a 2023 film by Neil Breen, and a sequel to the 2019 film Twisted Pair. The film stars Breen once again in the double role of twins Cade and Cale, as well as director, producer and everything else behind the scenes. As always with his films, Breen stars as a superhuman Jesus allegory or something, and a plot that revolves around fighting evil corporations or something, all in Breen’s typical abstract, naïve way. This film is in fact even more incomprehensible than his usual efforts: superhero billionaire, secret agent maybe also genetically engineered A.I. and Jesus metaphor Cade invests in a mental hospital that is run down, and secretly uses it to train its patients to becomes warriors that fight evil…apparently anyway; I didn’t get any of that from actually watching this. Once again, Breen focuses on abstract monologues about good and evil than making any sense.

Near the beginning of the film, Cade helps some young adults who are in a crash, and takes them to his castle – or maybe the hospital – I don’t know. Rather than take them to get medical attention he has them stay the night…on the floor. Then they seem to be staying at this run down hospital where they are kept in appalling conditions, and Cade is still supposed to be the good guy? Honestly, this film is baffling, and I don’t think anyone other than Breen himself can really get what is supposed to be happening. And this is all before we deal with the scene with Breen wrestling a tiger, and the dance sequences with a ghost or something which defy any attempt at mental processing.

One somewhat notable aspect about the production is that the film is entirely shot in front of a green screen. This makes everything look extremely unconvincing. The tiger wrestling scene is completely ridiculous but I suppose it has a little competency to it: it still looks completely fake, but there’s at least some effort to get the tiger and Breen aligned. Once again, we are left with Breen’s characteristically well-intentioned, but unconvincing production that means well, but is simultaneously simple and overly complex plot-wise, and acting flatter than cardboard that means you can very take any scene seriously. In short: it’s just more Breen doing his thing.