Due to moving conditions and general laziness preventing me from rolling a film this week, I took a friend's suggestion for a film on Netflix, which I'd been putting off for months.
So guess who slept through part of Thursday and spent most of the day either lazing about watching his uncle's movies or shopping for stuff for university? And guess who spent most of Friday moving into his dorm and taking care of financial situations. If you guessed Gilbert, then you'd be right, although I am slightly concerned about how you managed to guess in such an exact manner. Since I'm a lazy bastard, I've decided that rather than squeeze in a film once I'm all moved in and frantically try to type out a review late at night, I'll just watch a movie a friend recommended to me and squeeze out a review late at night anyways. It's not a perfect system, but it's what we're rolling with.
Besides, I've been meaning to set up a reader recommendation thing if this blog ever got popular enough to have readers aside from my dad and Adept, so consider this the first one of those.
Anyways, the film Foehammer's been pushing me towards seeing for months on end now was Repo! The Genetic Opera, a recent cult film about organ harvesting intrigue set to the sort of music Meat Loaf rejects from Jim Steinman for being too over the top. It's designed as an incredibly stylized, gory film, and carries the air of wanting to pass itself as SOMETHING YOU'VE NVER SEEN BEFORE, unintentional misspelling included. Seeing as I don't exactly indulge in splatterhouse musicals too terribly often, I can't really tell you if it succeeds in doing so, but I can at least tell you if I enjoyed the result or not. So let's do that and see if I did.
The set-up involves a world completely consumed by the twin plagues of an organ failure epidemic and the inability to stop singing for two minutes. Although the second curse has no cure, a company known as GeneCo offers up organ transplants for the whole world, making it not only necessary, but trendy and fashionable to get a new heart or face. Of course, this all goes upsides down and backwards when GeneCo pushes for laws allowing organ repossession from supposed deadbeats who couldn't pay for their surgery. Now, with half the populace terrorized by the slasher villain-like Repo Men and the other half addicted to a painkiller extracted from corpses, GeneCo's top exec must figure out how to make the system run after he's gone.
All of this is told in a sliding comic book panel style, which is interesting enough, but doesn't show up often enough for my tastes. The film's aesthetic puts me in mind of Sin City, with a few sets that certainly look completely digital and deliberately designed after comic art, so a few more pop-ups throughout the film couldn't have hurt. As it stands, the panel style only shows up to open and close the movie, and provide a few flashbacks regarding the same story from three perspectives early on in the film. I'd have preferred they work as transition shots, but what are you gonna do?
Anyways, the actual plot of the film revolves around Shilo Wallace, a girl locked away in her room by her father Nathan (played by Anthony Stewart Head, in a surprise appearance that I only parsed after about fifteen minutes of him being onscreen - I'm used to him doing a British accent for Buffy). Nathan has locked Shilo up due to a rare incurable blood disease that took her mother, and to prevent her from discovering his real work as a Repo Man. However, as is wont to happen with teenage girls in fiction, Shilo wants more out of life, and sneaks out at night, resulting in her stumbling upon a conspiracy involving her favorite GeneCo pop star, pain killer addiction on the streets, and a dark secret in her family's past.
You'll notice I took the time to set up both the backstory and the actual story this time around. I did so because I feel it's a bit necessary to emphasize how complicated the movie's story FEELS while watching it. There's a huge amount of information you need to parse in order to follow the story and understand character motivations (a whole bunch of stuff regarding a three way, sexually charged sibling rivalry, and a Greek choir-like gravedigger are some of the things you'll need to pay attention to), and until the last twenty minutes, I had some trouble untangling it all beyond the most basic thread. And by the end, with that understanding, I didn't feel there was anything deeper to the story. It's a narrative presented as is, with no deeper themes or challenges or anything to be ABOUT. Some people might not mind, especially since it's a horror-comedy musical, but I spent all that time trying to understand the story, so I might as well be rewarded for it.
However, a fair deal of my confusion may have come from the musical nature of the movie. I am perfectly aware this is a somewhat popular cult film, and that what I'm about to say may be contentious for some, but the songs don't really do anything for me. They're perfectly fine, presumedly well-composed songs, and I liked listening to them in the movie (nothing ever struck me as obnoxious or bad), but they sort of clutter up the film a bit. According to Wikipedia, there are 54 distinct songs in this movie; even if some of them are only a few seconds long, that's a LOT of songs for one picture. One song tends to start before another ends, and the rapid changes in tone and tempo between them make following things somewhat difficult for me. Compounding the issue is a tendency towards incomprehensible lyrics, and a straight-up lack of anything memorable. I like Seventeen and the gravedigger's song at the beginning, but in general the only songs I remember anything from are the ones where people move into a screaming, metal growl.
(This said, I do remember getting really into some of the songs while watching, even if I don't remember how they go or even which ones they were now, so give that to the movie. For whatever it's worth.)
Although the songs muddle the story up a bit for me, I do enjoy the characters. All the actors turn in perfectly good performances (Paris Hilton may have won the Razzie for her turn as one of the GeneCo heirs, but "vain and image obsessed" is what you expect out of her), and as someone who likes music but has no training in it, I can't identify any bad singing in the movie. Hell, some of the vocal performances I'd go so far as to call great in places. Additionally, they're all drawn out clearly enough in their roles and visual designs that it's easy to tell who is who and what they want out of life. How they relate to one another is another thing entirely, but on their own, each character works as a functioning unit. Special shout-out to Stewart Head for making both his fatherly facade and tormented grinning madman play equally well, and Terrance Zdunich for making the grave robber the right sort of creepy - and also for having an interesting last name.
Really, the film's look is what I like best about it. It's all fluorescents and neons and black lights with a dark gothic take on the future, and like I said there's some comic book art influence running through it. I don't want to say it makes the world look dreamlike or surreal, because the whole thing feels a little too... I'm inclined to say "grounded," but it's not the right term. More like if a bunch of punk-goths decided to stage an opera in their local hang-out. Like a stage play is the phrase I'm looking for. Maybe.
I also enjoyed the costume design. As I noted, the look of each character helps define who they are and make them easily identifiable, but even the background characters had good costumes created for them. Nothing really memorable comes to mind (a recurring problem with this film, it seems) but while watching it they offer up a sense that this is a world completely obsessed with fashion. Not just clothing or make-up, mind, but body modification and the latest trendy designer organs. They add a little bit of believability to the backstory and make the world easier to get drawn into.
Overall, though, I just don't find the film terribly memorable. There ARE plenty of elements I enjoyed, but once the film ended, I could only recall little bits and pieces of it. Although enjoyability is an important aspect of any piece of media, I'd say memorable moments or beats or plot points are essential to any work actually STAYING with you. Repo! The Genetic Opera doesn't have those. When the credits finished, I didn't remember much beyond what I've reported here, and felt no desire to watch it again. That is, I'd argue, a huge blow against it for me.
However, it DOES make for quite an experience. I'd be loath to say I HATED the first reader recommendation for the blog, and I'd also be a liar if I said so. Repo! is certainly an interesting film, and I can see where the cult status comes from, but I don't dislike it. If anything, it simply doesn't do anything for me. It's worth checking out if the phrase "horror-musical splatter comedy" appeals to you, but I wouldn't expect to have it stick with you for too long afterwards. If you wind up liking it, though, I'd recommend giving it another go-around. I've already started giving some of the songs a relisten, and I'm slowly coming around on the film.
Maybe I'll give it another look someday.
(Assorted thoughts:
- "DADDY'S GIRL'S A FUCKING MONSTER" and "It's my job... to steal, and rob.... GRAAAAAAAAAAAAVES!" are the two lines that stuck in my head, for the record.
- I just remembered the line "Tell me why oh why are my genetics such a bitch," and how it instantly put me to thinking of Shilo as Liquid Snake for a fair portion of the movie.
- Although I didn't remember any songs while writing up this review, I'm still gonna look up the soundtrack on YouTube and probably have some of the stuff I liked on rotation over the weekend.
- Joan Jett makes a cameo. I think it's a neat one.
- The sibling with a face stretched over his face isn't too creepy during the live-action stuff, but the panel he gets at the end looks incredibly disturbing to me, and I don't know why.
- Any time the film makes good on the splatter part of its genre, it basically turns into Bye Body Part: The Movie. Bye eyes. Bye face. Bye spine. Etc.
- Some of the moments in the movie make it seem like everyone is actually singing all their lines and everyone around them is perfectly aware of that fact. Especially a moment early on where the grave robber screams out one of his lines and alerts the authorities to his presence.
- Of some interest - Anthony Stewart Head singing Sweet Transvestite. You're welcome.)
I'm really sorry this review got out so late. Although I joked in the set-up about working on it late, I didn't really have any intention of ACTUALLY pushing it out with only two hours left in the day. Either way, it's here, and I'm at my college now, so yay for both those things. Now to try and get some ACTUAL work to support myself and not die, hopefully.
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