Review of Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) by Sean J — 15 Aug 2016

What this movie got right:

- Casting Ogre (of Skinny Puppy) and Bill Mosely (of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) and suprisingly Paris Hilton as three spoiled offsprings of one of the main villians. They were all superb.

- The basic storyline was very interesting.

- Some of the set design was eye catching.

- Costumes were done with a nice flair. The Repo Man suit was amazing.

Things that this film unfortunately got wrong:

- The music. I'm sorry, this is a rock opera. The music is the most important character and it just never stood out for me. No songs were left stuck in my head and there were never any hooks to latch on to. And would it hurt to just occasionally rhyme? Just once in awhile? For me, most of the music just sounded like Evanescance/modern goth which just doesn't pull any emotional weight with me.

- The movie seemed to want to be Sweeney Todd when it should have been going for Rocky Horror. The parts that stuck with me were when things really went over the top like the reposessing of organs or when the siblings act out all of their disfunctions. The rest of the flick tried to be serious and felt very disjointed.

- The comic book panel cut away scenes that were used for delivering back stories. This was fine at the beginning of the movie but quickly became a crutch when they couldn't figure out how to tell the character's stories in a timely fashion. Kept taking me out of the story and was too jarring. Also reminded me too much of Tank Girl which isn't necessarily a good thing.

- A third act that was anti-climatic.

- I just don't care about 17 yr. old emo/goth girls even if they do live a cool post-apocalyptic type world.

- Some really cheap looking CGI environments that look about 5 years past their prime.

- An all in all very muddled and confused storytelling process. This movie just never felt like it knew what it wanted to be. I'm all about pushing boundries in cinema, but it helps if the director knows exactly what they want out of a film other than just trying to mash a bunch of different genres together.

With that being said, I did really enjoy parts of this film. It just made me want to see what could have been done with it in the hands of a truly gifted director. I guess I shouldn't be suprised as this was the same director who did Saw II, III, and IV and none of those movies have ever done anything for me.