Repo! The Genetic Opera (Movie Review)

In the middle of this century, organ failure has become such an epidemic that very few people can afford the necessary transplants. However, a company named has GeneCo come along and introduced organ financing. Now that everyone can "afford" new organs, getting fresh body parts is a fashion statement; what's your x-ray look like?

But with the good must come the bad. If an organ recipient misses a payment, GeneCo has the right to repossess their organ. Enter the Repo Man, a masked figure with a mission and a knife. Repossession becomes a gruesome affair as the Repo Man grabs what's rightfully GeneCo's.

***

Repo! The Genetic Opera's concept is absolutely killer, a setup for gore, rock music, a classic villain, and plenty of B-movie elements. Sadly, the film never capitalizes upon this potential. I desired to enjoy the film more, but I could not deny that the movie would benefit from a stronger vision. Its budget was limited, but Repo! needed to think bigger and to aim higher. This film should be an event and an experience, but its director and crew seem fine with it being just another film, and a mediocre one at that. It's the question I keep coming to when I look at films like 300 or Wanted: is it fair to criticize a film for not reaching a level it never intended to reach? No, it's not, but I can’t help but fault Repo! This movie feels like it once had high aspirations and gave up on them very early on.

Saw Syndromes

Because Repo! received such a limited release, the "from the producers of Saw" tag seems a bit pointless; you can't rope in the teenage horror audience if they don't even know that your film exists. It did, however, increase my interest in the film. The first Saw knew what it wanted to be, and became it. It's vastly underrated as an over-the-top film that loved to play with its audience. That being said, I did not realize that "from the producers of Saw" actually meant "from the producers of Saw and the director of the Saw sequels." Said sequels reverted the series back to what most horror films are today: joylessly gory, boring, and lazily made. Repo! may have good qualities, but it suffers from many of the same syndromes as director Darren Lynn Bousman's Saw sequels. The result renders an interesting premise incredibly boring, mainly due to a lack of focus.

Certain visual choices reflect a laziness from the filmmakers. It seems like half of the film was shot on a steadicam, not for artistic flourishes, but out of convenience. They weren't aiming for a certain look with the cinematography. A camera was slapped on the steadicam and they just moved around the action. Don't confuse this with a director creating a rich environment that allows the camera to roam free, catching whatever action seems to be happening in any given corner. What's seen here is a director not knowing what he wants, so he gets the most portable-but-still-good-looking solution to glide around, creating "good shots" with ease.

Bursts of Singing

The most immediate and obvious shortcoming of Repo! is its music. It doesn't really have many songs, but rather bursts of sung dialogue. It reminded me of an exchange during an episode of Seinfeld, "The Opera." Kramer claims that in Italy, in the old days, they all sang to one another instead of speaking.

KRAMER: That's the way it was, you know. You listen to the language, it's got that singsongy quality. It's the language Jerry, the language.

JERRY: So why don't they talk like that now?

KRAMER: Well its, uh, well its too hard to keep up, you know, they were tired.

I felt kind of the same way. I'd rather see the singing condensed into more organized, defined songs. As is, you get a couple of sung lines of dialogue with banging drums providing the rhythm. While the constant singing resembles an actual opera, I found the bleeding of songs into each other exhausting.

The trouble comes when you make a movie first and a musical second. If the songs take a backseat to the plot, even an underdeveloped one, it makes a mess of things -- more so than the opposite would (plot taking a backseat to the songs; it's not good either, but something is salvaged). Repo! would have benefited immensely if the creators could have gotten proven songwriters on board the film or the original play. Not always realistic for a smaller production, I realize, but a stronger musical presence could have cleaned up some of the mess.

Beyond that, I wonder if the project was flawed since its conception. As it is, this story, told as a rock opera, just doesn't work. The film needs to drop the rock opera aspect altogether, as the result feels like it was added much later in the process. The only other way I can see this film being stronger is if the story and music were based on an album. Instead of bringing in a musical talent to try to create an “album" out of this story (look at the failure of Idlewild and its album by the usually fantastic Outkast), a rock opera like this needs to be adapted from a concept album. Tommy has been such a success over the years because it's great music by a band who knows how to write songs.

American Idiot

When I think of Repo! I can't help but think of Green Day's American Idiot. Apart from some at-times embarrassingly shallow lyrics, the album is just that: an album. Without becoming repetitive, it creates an atmosphere, a style, and a musical world as much as a pop/rock album can. American Idiot (and Green Day) knows how to stick to its concept for the sake of living in its own created world, but it doesn't do it to a fault. I can listen to the album and know that a song won't hit certain keys or chords, not because it's a predictable song, but because of the culture of the album. It’s the world that the album lives in. Everything feels connected.

Repo! is going for a heavier sound than Green Day, but I wonder if that's something that alienates the film. As someone pointed out, the movie partially wants to appeal to the "Hot Topic crowd" more than the classic gore and rock opera fanboys, but as much as the Hot Topic Crowd would like to be seen as dark, gothic, and heavy, the reality is that music such as American Idiot is right up their alley. That's not a bad thing. If Bousman and company wanted to create a stronger, more appealing film, I think they should have considered a little bit of a broader music genre; a genre that allows some more creative freedom. Even with great metal bands, the songs quickly begin to sound the same. There's not enough room to grow and explore, but that’s exactly what Repo! needs.

I hate to play Armchair Producer, but I feel that if more money was spent on music and perhaps less on the actors, Repo! could have been much more effective. I’d rather see a film with great music sung by some talented no-names than a film with weak music performed by faces I recognize.*

***

Oddly enough, the most interesting part of Repo! is told through its brief prologue. But the film pushes its strengths aside to make room for its weaknesses. I drove 6 hours roundtrip to Austin to see this film because of its promising premise. While I don’t regret the trip, I do wish I came away with a better film -- a film I could still be excited about.

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*I don’t know how much the actors of Repo! were paid. It should be noted that I’m stating this under the assumption that they received more money than no-name actors would.