Repo! The Genetic Opera

There are two ways in which a movie can succeed.

One—it can have a fully realized plot that works to explain some larger subtextual moral. It can demonstrate a mastery of technical and thematic areas and create an emotional response in the viewer. This is the route that most critics look for when giving a positive review. Films like Schindler's List. On the Waterfront. A Streetcar Named Desire.

The other way in which a movie can succeed is with ideas. This type of movie doesn't have to make sense in the same way that a traditional film does. It simply has to take you somewhere you have never been, and hopefully throw your mind through a few loops along the way. Films like El Topo. The Fountain. Eraserhead. Gummo. The Exterminating Angels.

Repo! The Genetic Opera definitely falls into the latter category.

The story, told entirely through song, details the intersecting secrets of people living in a world where a mysterious virus has caused random organ failure and forced people to resort to leasing cloned organs, at a very high price.

There is so much whimsy in this film that it almost becomes an absurdist fairytale. It skips and jumps from one homage to the next, cribbing notes from Rocky Horror in one scene before moving on to Rigoletto in the next. Genres and archetypes are thrown up against one another and mashed together with reckless abandon mixing Grand Guignol with Sondheim and Disney with Faces of Death. It cuts together the pieces of our collective pop culture consciousness the same way that the antagonists cut together new forms for their bodies.

And it's wickedly funny too.

Picking up where the ultimate consumers of Romero's shopping malls left off, Repo! makes for a brutal satire of consumer culture where human flesh is a commodity bought and sold with government approval. People have designer spines and get upgrades on their bodies when they go in for maintenance on their artificial organs. Starlets don't forget to wear panties, they forget to sew on their new faces.

Darren Lynn Bousman has made a name for himself as a go-to guy for over the top, operatic gore and he doesn't shy away from it here. Repo! is often tremendously bloody with sanguine spilling left and right, often directly on top of naked flesh. He takes what he learned making Saw II--IV and pushes in into overdrive as he uses it to skewer one satirical target after the next.

Normally I am one to shy away from sexualized violence. I find it repulsive and saddening, but here, Bousman has found that perfect mix between sexy and grotesque. Though the bloodletting is vicious, it never spills over into elaborate rape fantasy. It is a shame that he is no longer attached to the Hellraiser relaunch.

The cast, made up of a bizarre collection of geek favorites, musicians and world famous opera singers is almost weirder than the movie's central conceit. Paul Sorvino is brilliant fun as the patriarch who controls the world but finds himself unable to defeat cancer. Sorvino is fascinating to watch when he is let loose and he has a singing voice to rival any star of stage. Sarah Brightman is also quite good in a small roll that is entirely divorced from her signature turn in Phantom of the Opera. The rest of the cast is a bit of a mixed bag. Alexa Vega is strong as the cloistered daughter of the eponymous organ ripper and Anthony Stewart Head outdoes his Buffy singing, even as his role is too close to that of Giles. Meanwhile Bill Mosely is obnoxious and all over the place, playing his seventh version of Chop-top while Paris Hilton is actually shockingly watchable as Amber Sweet, a heightened reality version of herself. But the real standout is Nivek Ogre of Skinny Puppy. The man steals the show as a deformed lothario who has a nasty habit of killing his lovers.

At a point, the film becomes as scattershot as the cast list with some moments hitting it out of the park while others miss wildly. By the end of the film one would be hard pressed to explain how the characters all end up in the same place, but it has long since ceased to matter because you've either accepted that the film is fairly divorced from reality, or else, you've walked out of the theater. I stayed, and loved every minute of it.

When I see a movie like this, I want to be taken to a new world. Somewhere strange and alien. The futuristic retro-chic of the Repo's alternate dimension is vibrant and dazzling, it's a whirling dervish of colors and styles. And though it never comes together, the overwhelming strangeness of it is intoxicating. The music is not for everyone, and the bloodletting is extreme, but Repo! offers something rarely seen at the multiplex--originality.

A-

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This modern, actually futuristic, opera is unlike anything I've seen. Many of its qualities remind me of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show,' a film that was never on my list of favorites. This is better simply because it's able to hold together a more plausible and serious story yet still present itself in the aesthetic of a psychedelic musical. It blends brutality with comedy and music very effectively, in fact, there were far more laughs in our theater than anything else. The interactions between the characters as they sing their parts make for great character development and story progression simultaneously. The character's themselves are all well performed, including Paris Hilton (what happens to her needs to be seen, not described). I'm not the type to like weird, cult films but this held my attention. It's definitely worth a viewing, and if you have time to immerse yourself, then it's definitely worth some good applause.

I have been to cult films, I have been to great grand openings of everything from movies to books to games to this and that. If there is an opening, I will go to it. This movie... this entire experience, it was like nothing I've ever been to in my life.

People are asking whether or not this type of movie will gain 'cult' status, but the fact of the matter is... it already has. To quote Darren: "I'm standing up here, and I see that seventy percent of you are in costume, and the others are saying 'Damnit, why didn't I dress up?'." Dressing up isn't all that makes a cult, the fans are. The fact of the matter is, this movie has a rabid, feasting fanbase that would gladly hog-tie and grapple you to the movie just so that you have the experience of seeing it.

Those who say that this movie is crap, that it doesn't have an audience, and that the music is (my personal favorite) 'atonal', either weren't watching, listening or paying any attention to it at all. This movie is worth far more than anything I've seen in theatres for years. It is easily the most unique experience of my life.

I'd rather see something completely unique, even if it's offensive, gritty, shot with hand-held camera and staring sock puppets than watch anymore of the 'wannabe' good movies that have been coming out. These 'Masterpieces' that people consider to be SO amazing have nothing on a movie like this. This movie is untouchable, it is completely beyond all words.

Everything about this movie has a unique touch that is completely noticeable in absolutely every scene and song. It is an insult to creativity and artistry that a movie such as this should be shoved into only seven cities and outcasting all those who want to watch it so badly.

Myself and two friends drove down from Canada to watch it in Seattle, and we weren't the only ones, and some of the people at our showing were from Texas. This movie will surpass any movie this year through the years, simply because of the fans.

Do NOT miss watching this movie. If you can watch it, even if the theatre is three or four hours away... DO IT. Go in costume, shriek and have the best time of your life.

Such a movie gives me hope - that sometimes between all the remakes, prequels, sequels, reboots and directors cuts and whatever bores we still get now and then a gem to watch.

What the world needs are certainly more such fine imaginations like Repo! The Genetic Opera. Somehow the movie reminds me a little of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and that's for sure not the worst reference.

Well, the genetic opera is filled with fine ideas, gore, slash and some good songs. It is an explosion of blood compared with all the blood- and lifeless productions which flood the screens of cinema and all the networks nowadays.

If you like musicals and gore, this is made for loving you - and don't forget to watch The Devil's Carnival, also directed by Darren Lynn Bousman: a horror musical.

Fewer words, I imagine, strike greater fear in the minds of audiences and producers alike when the words "passion project" are thrown around. After helming three straight Saw sequels, long-suffering director Darren Lynn Bousman finally gets to cut loose creatively with his gory rock opera Repo, which evolved from a series of quickie stage improvisations courtesy of the film's writer/composers, Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich. Unfortunately, the film turns out to be more Across the Universe than Hedwig and the Angry Inch, eager to please but ultimately less than enjoyable for anyone not a devout enthusiast of its chosen musical framing – except in this case, it's a nostalgia-fest for turn-of-the-90's goths instead of baby boomers.

Bousman, to his credit, assembled an intriguing cast: Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Anothny Stewart Head (a stage veteran who's also appeared as Frank n' Furter in Rocky Horror), Spy Kids star Alexa Vega, elevator-music superstar Sarah Brightman, renowned character actor Paul Sorvino (Law and Order, Goodfellas), horror vet Bill Moseley, and, in a shrewd bit of meta-casting, tabloid magnet Paris Hilton. In much the same manner that reading the cast list seems to create a logic fissure in the universe, the film's disparate elements never coalesce into anything coherent. Ostensibly an elaborate comment on consumer society and celebrity obsession, Repo seems to serve mainly as a hyperactive springboard for a filmmaker overeager to prove his uniqueness.

Set in a cartoonishly grim future, Repo revolves principally around Nathan (Head), a "repo man" who impolitely collects organs from hapless citizens on behalf of GeneCo (led by Sorvino's sinister, dying Rotti), a massive conglomerate that swooped in to commodify healthy organs following a deadly epidemic of organ failures. His daughter, Shilo (Vega), is ill with the blood disease that claimed her mother, and is kept in unwilling sanctuary in his home. Meanwhile, Rotti's offspring (Moseley, Hilton and Skinny Puppy's Nivek Ogre) bicker, in an obvious nod to King Lear, over which one will inherit their decaying father's empire. Oh, and somewhere in the mix there's also Mag (Brightman), a celebrity singer with GeneCo-implanted holographic eyes who's trapped in a dead-end contract.

If the plot seems needlessly dense, that's because it is, and the film is crippled at the outset by its ludicrous number of characters and plot threads, never to recover. This undercuts both the plot's coherency – already tenuous at the outset – and the integrity of the performances proffered by its diverse cast. Particularly wasted is Moseley, who brings his character to slyly sadistic life, but doesn't get much chance to develop in his eight or so minutes of screen time. Others get shoehorned into thankless roles – Vega, who has Broadway experience and shows evidence of being a capable performer, is saddled with a bratty, shrill heroine, and Sorvino, as the film's principal villain, is never able to find a consistent tone either of internal anguish or righteous indignation, largely because he's provided with a few too many motivations relating to nearly every other character. The supporting cast is uniformly competent – including the widely reviled Hilton – but none besides Mosely leave much of an impression. Head's "repo man" suffers most - his character enjoys his grisly work at some points and is disturbed by it at others, simply at the film's convenience, making him useless either as a figure of scorn or sympathy.

Smith and Zdunich don't only botch the film's plotting but also its densely arranged musical score, which spends most of its time occupying a confounding space somewhere between Ministry and Evanescence that simply shouldn't exist. Occasionally, a novel vocal harmony or passably funny lyric will arise (particularly in scenes where Head and Sorvino duet), but none of the individual songs are at all memorable. There's an opportunity for redemption in the film's embrace of over-the-top satire near the film's conclusion (featuring a memorable moment where Hilton's character loses face a bit) but ultimately opts for a lame, sequel-ready non-ending. For all of the film's references and targets, its Vaseline-on-the-lens aesthetics, leaden musical numbers and generally witless approach keep it from joining the ranks of the beloved "outsider" musicals its creators so obviously worship.

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