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Gory 'Repo' hits a low note

By Colin Covert
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Published on Thursday, Nov 20, 2008

You thought Sweeney Todd was bloody? It's a skinned knee compared with Repo! The Genetic Opera. This goth rock opera features buckets of gore, a campy score and melodrama galore in a calculated effort to become a 21st century Rocky Horror Picture Show. Its creative juices, however, are strictly anemic.

The post-apocalyptic world has been decimated by mass organ failures. But one man's crisis is another's opportunity, and spleen merchant GeneCo rises to the occasion. It offers life-saving transplants at exorbitant prices. You'd better stay current with your payments, though. A cadre of masked slashers reclaim GeneCo's property when customers fall behind.

Paul Sorvino is corpulent villainy incarnate as Rotti Largo, the biotech's tyrannical CEO; a certain hotel chain heiress vamps cluelessly as his plastic surgery-addicted daughter. Their rough relationship is mirrored by the conflict between sickly Shilo (Alexa Vega) and her overprotective scientist father, Nathan (Anthony Head of TV's Buffy.) He keeps her locked in the family mansion to shield her from infection, to keep away suitors and to conceal a Terrible Secret she must not know. The two clans move through the story on a collision course. In true operatic style, it ends in tears, tragedy (or at least crimson Karo syrup) and song.

The film aims for instant Midnight Movie cult status, but its coolness credentials are wobbly. The sight of crooning cadavers has its appeal, but the film's strenuous efforts to dazzle are wearying. Darren Lynn Bousman, the hackmaster behind Saw II, III and IV, edits the film as if he ran over the footage with a Snapper lawn mower. The singers are strong enough (opera buff Sorvino is especially impressive) but strident score is torture porn for the ears. The costumes make every female look like a Victorian streetwalker and each man look like Jack the Ripper.

Unless you already own a collection of black lipsticks, bondage bridlery and Dracula capes, move along, there's nothing to see here.

You thought Sweeney Todd was bloody? It's a skinned knee compared with Repo! The Genetic Opera. This goth rock opera features buckets of gore, a campy score and melodrama galore in a calculated effort to become a 21st century Rocky Horror Picture Show. Its creative juices, however, are strictly anemic.

Get the full article here.


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