Studio/Running Time: Lionsgate, 98 mins.
Release Date: Nov. 7
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Writer: Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich (screenplay and play)
Cinematographer: Joseph White
Starring: Paul Sorvino, Anthony Head, Paris Hilton, Bill Moseley, Terrance Zdunich
It’s not very difficult for a producer or director to pitch a
comedy or drama, a family or science fiction flick.The rules are pretty much already in place
and only a small percentage of what’s seen in theaters does much to move beyond
these categories—for better or worse, most entertainment is largely the
same.Where there are no rules, though,
is in the world of cult films.What
makes John Waters’ movies cult classics is so different from what makes Eraserhead or Donnie Darko revered by midnight spectators that it’s a mug’s game
figuring out what will find its audience.Thinking along these lines, Repo! The Genetic
Opera is unique, if only for a film of its budget bracket
(approximately $8.5 million), in that it’s a self-conscious attempt to create a
cult film.
Repo! posits a
future where the world has been taken over by the über-powerful GeneCo corporation
whose business is based on cosmetic-organ transplants.When people default on the loans they make
for a new heart or face or whatever, GeneCo sends a repo man to recollect the organ
in as unnecessarily brutal a manner as possible.The future has also been redecorated as a
goth-happy dystopia filled with singing and, well, you get a sense of how
over-the-top everything is.It’s as if
the Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey school of horror films combined with The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Blade Runner to make some sort of sci-fi-gothic-camp-horror-musical.
The film tries so many different things, though, that it’s unable to pull
everything off as well as it should.Singing, always of key concern in a musical, is done by a cast of both
professionals and amateurs, with easily discernible differences in
quality.Combined with a haphazard and
unpolished book, this means that few of the songs seem destined to become even
underground hits.Darren Lynn Bousman’s
(Saw II and III) directing is surprisingly fluid, but the cinematography often mires the world into a sub-par mush of overexposed film trying to create faux-chiaroscuro
lighting.Special effects, both in
horror scenes and as a result of Repo!’s
sci-fi trappings, are surprisingly good, but some of the sets themselves feel
cheap.While these seams may be intentional
given the film’s purpose, they still keep all the elements from coming together
to form a cohesive whole.
Repo!’s
distribution (which is to say, that it actually has any at all) is definitely a good thing, even though it’s received no
advertising budget.What it represents
is filmmaking for a niche, concerned with the long tail instead of opening
night box office revenue.But what is onscreen isn’t as shocking or different as it would like to be; for all
its mish-mash of genres and ideas, it’s mostly just a confusing musical.It’s impossible to predict if 10 years from
now there’ll still be an audience in love with Repo!, but as it stands now, the filmseems destined to be forgotten.