Eh, screw it. I might as well...
I've had this review running up on Facebook for a couple of days. Here's my be-all-end-all on "Repo".
Title: Repo! The Genetic Opera
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Running Time: 97 Minutes
Distributor (USA): Lionsgate
To hear Darren Bousman tell it, "Repo! The Genetic Opera" never had a chance. The director has spent the past three and a half months touring the country with "Repo" co-creator/actor Terrance Zdunich, a copy of the shockingly (but not unexpectedly) misunderstood dystopian slasher musical in tow. The duo (joined in the most recent round of dates by a rotating cast of "Repo" actors including Bill Moseley and Alexa Vega) spend hours, oftentimes until the sky starts to lighten, meeting fans, signing autographs and all-around building a foundation of excitement and goodwill toward their pet project.
Why has Bousman been forced to take such measures? Simply put, his distributor, Lionsgate, has undersold and discredited "Repo" since way before principal photography even began.
A quick history lesson: "Repo!" started its life on the stage, originally as a "ten minute opera" focusing on the character of a graverobber, played by Zdunich (as he is in the film). As the size of the production grew, Zdunich and his creative partner Darren Smith were joined by Bousman, who served as stage director. Bousman went on steer three "Saw" sequels (parts 2, 3 and 4) to massive profit for Lionsgate, but he always hoped to make "Repo!" into a movie. In fact, after each consecutive "Saw" outing, he was offered the chance to make, as he claims, "anything" he wanted. Each time he had the studio execs excited about the premise but they inevitably balked the minute they realized they were dealing with a musical. Finally, after "Saw IV" (after Bousman, Zdunich, and Smith used cast and crew from that movie to shoot a short "sampler" of some of the songs after-hours) Lionsgate relented and "Repo!" went into production.
The budget was roughly 8.5 million dollars. Apparently the finished film scared the distributor because they threatened a direct-to-DVD release. Ultimately, this past November, "Repo!" opened on four screens in the U.S. It by and large sold out every show but, given such a limited release, it didn't have the opportunity to make any sizable amount of money. That Monday Bousman and Zdunich received an e-mail saying, in effect, "sorry, but you guys failed".
Critical reception was similarly harsh. While the horror press was either positive or *glowing* in its response to "Repo!", the mainstream press was decidedly less optimistic. Some said it was the worst film ever (beating out Ed Wood's immortal "Plan 9 From Outer Space"), some said it catered to "the lowest common denominator", and some (I'm looking at you, Peter Travers) couldn't see past Paris Hilton's involvement in the project (more on that later) and chose to focus on her and her alone.
Faced with the film dying before it even got a real shot, Bousman and Zdunich launched the "Repo Road Tour", screening the film for fans, holding Q and A sessions, and doing the hours-long meet and greets afterward. The overwhelming success of this outing prompted a second Road Tour (which is where I first got to see the film) and then a third (where I saw it again). What followed was a funny development: the film not only didn't leave the theaters it was in, but it gained new screens. The Road Tours were turning into full out events, with audience members showing up in costume and screaming, singing and dancing along to the film. Bousman has not been shy about stating his intentions to create the next "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and he seems to be off to a good start.
A quick note. According to Box Office Mojo (boxofficemojo.com), the figures for the Bousman-directed "Saw" movies are as follow:
"Saw II"
Production cost: $4 million
Domestic total gross: $87 million
"Saw III"
Production cost: $10 million
Domestic total gross: $84 million
"Saw IV"
Production cost: N/A
Domestic total gross: $63 million
Factoring in the law of diminshed returns, this is pretty goddamn staggering. Bousman held the franchise mostly steady for two sequels and still pulled in a respectable profit for part four.
It's a bit unfortunate that these figures were apparently not at all important to the guys who shafted "Repo!". A wider release might've brought in some money just on name recognition ("From the producers of 'Saw'!") alone.
So, okay, the film has a bit of a tortured backstory. But how is it?
In an earlier note, I called "Repo!" the second best film of the year (just under Chris Nolan's "The Dark Knight"). Obviously, then, my opinion of the picture if pretty high.
"Repo!" takes place in the "not-so-distant" future, when organ failure and disease have wreaked havoc on a global scale. To the aid of humanity springs a family-owned corporation called GeneCo who can provide any organ or perform any surgery desired. To make these offers more accessible to the Average Joe, they even have an easy and convenient financing plan. The only catch is that if you miss a payment, GeneCo can (and will) send out the repo man to get its property back.
Thus, on a general level "Repo!" plays like a dystopian nightmare. The film also, however, packs its narrative with a variety of character conflicts and interpersonal drama, some of which I will leave it to the prospective viewer to uncover. However, a sampling is in order.
There's Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino of "Goodfellas" fame), patriarch of the Largo family and the head of GeneCo. He begins the movie by finding out he has some sort of fatal disease and is low on time. This prompts an inner struggle regarding which of his children should inherit the company. All, he feels, are unworthy.
And, oh, the children...
There's Luigi (Bill Moseley, from "Texas Chain Saw Massacre II", "House of 1000 Corpses", and a thousand other genre pictures), a hot-tempered Type-A who thinks he's the smartest of the Largo offspring.
Then there's Pavi (Ogre from industrial band Skinny Puppy), who has a thing for wearing other people's faces.
Lastly, there's Amber (last name Sweet, not Largo), played by Paris Hilton. She's the "face" of GeneCo, the poster girl who promotes how safe the procedures are. The only problem is that she's addicted to surgery and Zydrate, the pain-relieving narcotic concoction that lets everyone deal with being cut open on a whim.
Amber's provider is the aforementioned Graverobber (played by Zdunich) who extracts his street-grade shit from corpses in the cemetery. Graverobber also functions as the narrator for the audience and a sort-of guide to...
Shiloh Wallace (Alexa Vega, the "Spy Kids" girl), a seventeen year old girl with an unnamed blood disease. She lives with her doting and protective father, Nathan ("Buffy The Vampire Slayer" alum Anthony Stewart Head) who moonlights as one of GeneCo's repo men, unbeknownst to his daughter.
Also of note: "Blind Mag", played by Broadway and recording star Sarah Brightman. I'll leave her backstory to the film to explain.
All of these characters are more or less connected through a plot involving Nathan's dead wife Marni, once the love of Rotti's life. Nathan blames himself for her death, but things aren't as straightforward as they seem.
As I said earlier, I consider "Repo!" to be a "dystopian slasher musical". There is almost no spoken dialogue in the entire picture. It really *is* a musical. All conversations take place in operatic sing-song and most of the film's main points are expressed in stuctured pop/rock songs (at one of the Road Tour stops I attended, Zdunich cited "Nine Inch Nails meets opera" as the vibe for which they were shooting). To that end, the cast does an admirable job delivering. Some (Brightman, obviously, and Ogre) are better singers than others (Moseley's voice fits the character, but that's about it). Hilton, as maligned as her presence may be by some (Bousman has admitted to having reservations about casting her) honestly doesn't distract or detract. She isn't on screen all that much and she sings her parts as well as anyone.
The songs are mostly effective. The musical bits that aren't part of an actual song (Rotti and Shiloh in the car, for those of you who have seen the movie already) can feel a bit forced, but not horribly so. A number of the tracks are damn cool. Audience reaction seems to be strongest for "Legal Assassin" (Nathan talks to pictures of Marni and laments his inability to tell Shiloh about his secret profession), "Zydrate Anatomy" (Graverobber tells Shiloh about Zydrate, Amber's addiction, and Mag's "predicament"), "Chase The Morning" (Mag fills Shiloh in on some family secrets) and "We Started This Op'ra Shit" (the Rottis welcome an audience to the film's climactic opera). For the latter song, people at my second Road Tour stop literally jumped up and danced in the aisles.
"Repo!" has an interesting visual style. Bousman does what he can with $8.5 million. Various elements of the characters histories are told through comic-book panels interspersed throughout the live action sequences. Fun note: Zdunich, who has worked as a storyboard artist on a number of films, drew every single one of them. This bent toward comic stylization helps make the less-than-realistic appearance of the futuristic cityscapes (again, $8.5 million can only do so much in Hollywood) feel fitting. The film has a soft glow about it that others have pointed out might be a method of masking the effects of this budget restraint, but I argue that it also offers a dream like quality to the action, making it seem all the more incredible.
The editing, I'll concede, can be rough in places. The initial "director's cut" was 2:15 in length and to reach a 97 minute running time a number of sequences and full songs were excised. Bousman insists that these moments made the film feel stuffed and overlong, but as it stands there are one or two points where songs seem to just roughly cut from one to the other.
Given the movie's parentage (a horror director at the helm, Twisted Pictures as a production company, et cetera), it goes without saying that the movie has some pretty gory moments, so squeamish viewers should be warned. While the blood is by no means "wall to wall", we definitely see the repo men at work on a few occasions and various body parts are removed at other times, often as the result of interaction with a sharp implement. One of Head's big numbers ("Thankless Job") literally takes place while he's eviscerating someone 7th grade biology class style.
So I have to ask. Does "Repo" sound like its for you? This may one of the ultimate "love it or hate it" movies. Straight up horror fans and gore hounds might be turned off by the singing. Musical fans will be turned off by the subject matter and presentation. Almost everyone will be turned off by Paris Hilton. It takes a certain mindset and sense of humor to appreciate a bastard amalgamation of these disparate elements. I should also note that, unlike say "Sweeney Todd", "Repo" doesn't fall back on Broadway conventions. A lot of times when musicals tackle horror it's with a certain "wink wink nudge nudge", as if to say (and I'm paraphrasing an earlier "Repo!" critic) "oh look! I can slum it and be lowest-common-denominator! Aren't I witty??". For as bizarre as "Repo!" is, it's playing its intentions straight. This is why Bousman and Zdunich are trying so hard to push it as the next great cult sensation.
This is where I would make a recommendation to Bousman and Zdunich. Cult films, sadly, are often only recognized as such years after they've seemingly faded away into obscurity. It's part of how the whole cult thing happens. The mainstream ignores the picture and then an audience, no longer beholden to the then-current negative discourse, sees it on its own terms, or sometimes through a viewpoint tinted with irony. This is why Ed Wood has become a cult hero. I think "Repo!" is strong enough that irony isn't needed to appreciate it. However, a revival a few years down the line might kickstart the craze in a big way. It's encouraging that shadowcasts are already popping up this soon after the initial release, but don't be frustrated by any apparent indifference at this point. You might be cashing this check for a long time to come still.
Bonus Lionsgate screw job alert!
The DVD and Bluray of "Repo!" were released this past Tuesday, timed I'm sure to coincide with Lionsgate's release of "Saw V" (which, let the record show, Bousman didn't direct). A few of the special features are mislabeled (clicking one brings up the other and vice versa) and the subtitles are horribly mangled (example: "Peeling back tissue" becomes, inexplicably and hilariously, "penile tissue"). Quality control seems to have not been a top priority to Lionsgate on this release. However, if the voluminous review I just drafted piques your interest at all, I *highly* recommend at least renting it on of the two formats. That being said, the *ideal* way to experience "Repo!" is in a theater full of crazy people dressed like scalpel sluts and screaming at the screen. Maybe you can reach a compromise. Rent it and bring over like five friends and a lot of alcohol. Oh, and invite me too!
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