I do appreciate, on some level, the modern culture of bad movies. It has its faults, and I'm sure I've ranted about them now and again--I don't like horror comedies that are "so-bad-it's-good" on purpose, and there are way too many of those being made these days. But I'm an optimist, and I think that some of these movies are genuinely worth it. I found Ghost Shark to actually be pretty tolerable, and The Room really is as fun as everyone says it is. But for some reason, the one everyone goes back to is Birdemic. I despise Birdemic, and I despise its director, James Nguyen. He is an egotistical, talentless, vapid excuse for a filmmaker and the laziness present in Birdemic and its sequel, to me, is as atrocious as After Last Season, which is a movie where people walk around in front of CGI shapes. So whenever news breaks of "the new Birdemic," I have the same feelings I'd have if Dr. Lecter told me what my mutton chop was. Neil Breen is said to be sort of like the new Tommy Wiseau, or the new James Nguyen, as demonstrated to the Internet by his film Double Down. After hearing about Double Down and its 2013 sibling Fateful Findings, I decided to start my look at him with one which I could go into blind. Reading the premise of I Am Here...Now was enough to convince me that I would have a winner.
I had no fucking idea.
Let me try this. And it must be a try: for Yoda's Maxim does not apply here. There is no "doing" in adequately describing I Am Here...Now, there is only trying. We open with a shot of twin moons in the sky. They explode, bringing us that excellent Times New Roman title card seen above. After this, we see a man known as The Being (Neil Breen), descend off the Cross. The Being is like Jesus, except his body is sometimes covered in circuit boards, and he sometimes changes into a gray-skinned ghoul-man while horror music plays. He is our hero, for he is the creature that created mankind. He is disappointed that his creation has fallen to a variety of sins, including allowing corruption in government and big business, and not embracing solar and wind power. "I am disappointed in your species--the human species!" he muses to a tarantula crawling next to a rose and a skull. The Being comes across a hillbilly couple in the desert who are drinking, smoking pot, and injecting heroin, all at the same time. The guy of this unfortunate pairing injects so hard that blood starts squirting out of his arm! The Being Schwarzaneggers the dude's clothes, and paralyzes the couple and turn them invisible: "Don't worry, it's only temporary!" he assures them. We then follow our second protagonist, who loses her job at an unspecified corporation doing unspecified environmental/alt-energy work due to unspecified "corruption." She considers becoming a stripper to support her baby, but her sister, who wears a torn-up shirt with no bra for no reason besides Neil Breen being creepy, encourages her to join a gang instead. That gang works as the enforcement for the very same pack of corrupt scumbags who are destroying the environment with their corruption! I could go on, but none of this real comes together. I believe it is what the French call a tranche de vie, or in some dialects, a tranche de merde.
This movie is more fascinating than good. As I get older, I begin to recognize that that which is fascinating is not necessarily good. The story of how the Opium Wars of the 19th Century somehow led to Christopher Lee acting in yellowface for Jess Franco over a hundred years later is fascinating, because it is not good. The story of how a self-professed ultra-fan of Alfred Hitchcock could release a Birds rip-off that was nothing but a colossal insult to Hitchcock is fascinating, but it is not good. There is too strong of a current of discomfort to I Am Here...Now for me to enjoy it unashamedly. Is it the wardrobe decisions Breen makes for his actresses, on top of the fact that he has a sex scene with them, which feature him wearing the ghoul mask? Is it the fact that all the direct points are vague to the point of meaninglessness, making every conversation stiff and uncanny? Is it the oddity of the film's writer and director playing the role of the creator of all humanity? Is it that Neil Breen's lanky physique is constantly draped in a torn brown t-shirt which is too small for him? I don't know, but all throughout this, there is just something fundamentally wrong.
I think it's gotta be that there truly is no meaning here. Breen desperately wants to be relevant to the issues of today, and I understand that they are hard to grapple with presentably and comprehensibly. But merely bringing them up and not making them tied thematically to the story is not going to look good. There is no stake for The Being's interest in humanity obtaining alternative energy, for example, aside from the fact that he is God and he believes alternative energy to be right. Most of us know the benefits solar and wind have over fossil fuels, so you could buy the intent that this as a mission of salvation, but it's where Breen tries to tackle "corruption" that he fails the hardest. This was a problem in Fateful Findings as well, and to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to explore "corruption" in Double Down too. Obviously businesses and government figures are corrupt. That, in 2017, should be readily apparent. But Breen doesn't name his targets, just vaguely evil populist fears. He expresses the anxieties of the times, but he does as someone who isn't affected by them. To be frank, he seems like sort of a dull person, but to see such a bland take on some of the most prevalent fears of the 21st Century is still of a little interest. Even if it makes the whole thing seem pointless.
Fortunately, I at least can take pointless now and again. This movie is fucking hilarious. I've named a lot of the best moments in the synopsis, but I haven't mentioned how often they reuse footage and, bizarrely, audio clips throughout this film. Whenever someone screams in pain, it is the same canned sound over and over again. We will also hear our third main character, an old man in a wheelchair, tell us "I only have...a month to live" at least three or four times, even when his mouth isn't moving. And yes, before you ask, one of the scenes that is looped more times than is necessary is a shot of someone vomiting. I don't have too many moments these days where I have laughed for longer than three minutes, but there were at least two scenes in this movie where I had to pause the movie and lie down, in case I passed out. One of these moments made me laugh for seven minutes. Chrysippus of Soli died of laughter after getting his pet donkey drunk and watching it try to eat figs. Also, the Funniest Joke in the World sketch on Monty Python actually did kill a guy. What I'm saying is, this movie almost killed me.
...sometimes, maybe that's what we need. I Am Here...Now has cleared the pipes. I am generally unrepentant in my appreciation of this movie, despite its many flaws. It will turn your afternoon into a week, I warn you. But if you can stand the pain, there's a lot here that's worth it.
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