Review of Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) by John W — 18 Jul 2010

A world-wide epidemic causes organs to start failing at an alarming rate causing a biotech company, Geneco, to launch an organ financing program. Those that fail to pay for their transplants have the Repoman sent after them to repossess the organs. Since society has become addicted to surgery they've also become addicted to painkillers. Since Geneco charges extremely high prices for the painkillers, grave robbers have started to produce their own lower grade version that is abstracted from dead bodies. All this goes on while a sheltered girl searches for the cure to her blood disease and the answer to what really happened to her mother. After being sucked into the world of Geneco she becomes unable to turn back. This also leads up to the grand finale, The Genetic Opera, where all her questions will be answered.

Well one thing I failed to mention in that summary is that this film is a musical. With the exception of a few here and there, all the dialogue is in song. Unfortunately this also leads into some full songs that are too nu-metal or too gothic for my liking. It will never be as memorable as another horror-esque musical known as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Aside from the terrible choice of musical direction the film is quite entertaining, even with Paris Hilton being in the cast. The gore is definitely top notch and the settings are quite interesting and the plot of a Repoman collecting on unpaid organs for a large biotech organization is pretty unique. Had this not been a musical it would have had potential to go down as a pretty solid horror film.

I think deciding to keep the original idea in tact and make this a movie replica of the play is going to lose a lot of potential fans in the process. Musicals are not everyone's cup of tea and although this film has a solid backbone it will be written off by most. After getting passed the fact that it's a musical they audience will have to tolerate the musical style choice. Not everyone is going to be into the idea of listening to dialogue over something that may have been written by Disturbed. I was able to get passed it to enjoy the movie but I definitely found it annoying plenty of times throughout.

Overall I give the film a C. The story is great, the cast is great and includes Ogre (from Skinny Puppy), Paul Sorvino, Bill Mosely and Anthony Head, and the gore is not full of CGI and served up in truckloads. The musical element of the film is the killer though. It's definitely something different from all the monotonous horror films that are being cranked out but most standard horror films are not going to be able to get into it.