We're living in an era of renewed interest in
overblown movie musicals, so it stands to reason that Mamma Mia! and High School Musical—the Xanadu and Grease of their generation, sort
of—should have a Rocky Horror Picture Show-style counterpart. Musicals are
hokey by nature, after all; attracting viewers to their old-fashioned
song-and-dance often requires striking a tone somewhere between high camp and
self-satire.
In its bid for that kind of midnight-movie infamy, Repo!
The Genetic Opera
piles on the glam-rock spectacle and coal-black comedy at such a brusque pace
that it often seems in danger of rattling off the rails entirely. The film
unfolds in a dystopic, surgery-obsessed future where organs are
custom-engineered by the omniscient corporation GeneCo for a steep price. Those
who default on payments can expect a visit from the repo men—and unlike
in Alex Cox's movie, their job doesn't involve punk rock and aliens so much as
violently ripped-open chest cavities. Orchestrating this medical mayhem is
Machiavellian CEO Paul Sorvino and his backstabbing children (played by horror
staple Bill Moseley, Skinny Puppy's Nivek Ogre, and an appropriately dead-eyed
Paris Hilton), but Sorvino's mysterious relationship with his employee (Anthony
Stewart Head) and Head's sickly daughter (Alexa Vega) drives the central plot.
Meanwhile, composer Terrance Zdunich skulks around as the quasi-narrator "Graverobber,"
Broadway's Sarah Brightman steals the show as a blind opera singer, and
characters break into pummeling, industrialized ballads with names like "Zydrate
Anatomy." Oh, and Joan Jett pops up for a guitar solo, just because.
It's remarkable that none of this proves exhausting,
considering that Repo! rarely pauses to catch its breath. Drawing from a bombastic visual
palette that incorporates elements of Blade Runner and Sweeney Todd, director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw
II-IV) plays up the
gore and even uses comic-book-style interludes as a framing device; Repo! seems aimed squarely at a
hyper-caffeinated audience raised on videogames and Red Bull. But he also
wrings some remarkable performances from his cast, particularly the
effortlessly magnetic Brightman, and Head, who finally puts those Bowie-esque
pipes he displayed on Buffy The Vampire Slayer to good use. They rescue Repo! when it's on the verge of tipping
from "outlandish" into "ridiculous." Besides, any film featuring a song called "We
Started This Opera Shit" and the sight of Paris Hilton's face falling off deserves the
cult audience it so desperately craves.
For an interview with Repo! co-star–and Skinny Puppy frontman–Nivek Ogre about making the film, see Decider Austin.