Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Screenplay: Terrance Zdunich and Darren
Smith
Based on the musical by Terrance
Zdunich and Darren Smith
Cast: Alexa Vega as Shilo
Wallace; Paul Sorvino as Rotti Largo; Anthony Stewart Head as Nathan Wallace;
Sarah Brightman as Blind Mag; Paris Hilton as Amber Sweet; Bill Moseley as
Luigi Largo; Nivek Ogre as Pavi Largo; Terrance Zdunich as GraveRobber; Sarah
Power as Marni Wallace
Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs
I look to Repo and think of Blue Banana. Note to readers from outside
the United Kingdom, but the closest thing to a brand mainstream alt-Goth
accessory store in my neck of the woods was called Blue Banana. I also admit,
whilst never at any time becoming a proper Goth, mainly because I don't think
baring suits the clothing wouldn't suit me in the slightest, I've always found
a greater appeal with the aesthetic, effected by having friends as a young
teenager who got into the style, and to the point I wonder if I accidentally
missed my Goth years as a teenager by ignorance. It helps, even if didn't like
the music, that I was growing up when the likes of Evanescence becoming popular; admittedly they are a divisive band,
but like the growing prominence of European symphonic metal bands, I'm pretty
sure that they helped a lot of people find their Goth years (or full Goth
lifestyle) knee deep in the same era of nu metal would die out.
This is poignant to start with
as, personally, I liked the aesthetic of Repo
even if it's a kitschy mainstream aesthetic. We have a terrible habit in our
culture to dismiss alt-Goth-emo culture, made even more problematic as there
was also a habit of engendered insults against this culture, which is poignant
as the same year Repo came out, the first Twilight film was also released. Definitely
more successful than Darren Lynn Bousman's
curious rock musical misfire, we're aware of all the issues the franchise had,
but there was inherently a problem for me of how the jokes could be derogatory
against young female fans, particularly as you could also find descriptions
like "overweight" which also revealed an emblematic issue with
sexism.
This is poignant as, honestly, Repo feels like the kind of film which
appeals to anyone regardless of gender, as opposite to Bousman's main job of helming Saw
franchise sequels as you can get, managing to win enough credit with Lionsgate to get this adaptation of a
rock musical onscreen. This, for all its gore, is obsessed with its music, has
all the clichés of mainstream Goth/alternative culture, and its over-the-top aesthetic,
a CGI/Vaseline-on-the-lenses style combining Evanescence music videos with a
dystopian metropolis is appealing for me particularly. (Strangely, it's reminiscent
of when Takashi Miike finished the Dead or Alive trilogy with 2000's Final, a shot on standard digital
camera dystopian sci-fi film shot in Hong Kong.) Repo also just looks like the
content of a Bizarre magazine, a
sadly now defunct British alternative culture magazine, minus all the nudity
and cheesecake photography it had.
A film is an oddity too, for
where else do you envision Bill Moseley,
Paris Hilton and Nivek Ogre of the cult industrial band Skinny Puppy as deranged siblings of a corrupt medical company?
Only Repo, which does evoke that, whilst The
Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) is so powerful even Disney's embargo on
retrospective theatrical bookings can't touch it, we'd all gladly have another
great cult musical especially of the horror ilk in existence. Admittedly, for
all my interest in Repo, it's
entirely a flop, an admirable one but one that evokes that, whilst sadly now
Disney property, Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974) is what
we all need to go to for a fix until another great one may hopefully appear one
day.
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And it's neither because of the aesthetic either Repo fails, returning to that problematic issue of how we easily dismiss this type of aesthetic, but that Repo becomes slight anyway. For all its exposition, even comic book illustrated sequences to explain back-story, Repo barely gets past its main plot and flesh out its world or characters. I don't necessarily blame the source material entirety for this either, instead feeling like a stage rock opera wasn't expanded enough for the cinema. Musically, it's an acquired taste, taking influence from post-nu metal and the mainstream interesting of industrial metal with a nice filtering of opera and classical music motifs. It does have a couple of legitimately bad song, actually bad songs few would like whatever taste, unfortunately both fostered onto Alexa Vega, playing the lead character, two dreadful sub pop punk pieces including lyrics about her genes being a bitch as she is incapacitated by a medicated illness that leaves her locked up in her fathers' home. For the most part in terms of the performances, it's prominent (barring one figure I'll mention later) that the most confident singer in the cast is Terrance Zdunich, a co-creator of the original material playing the narrator and a drug dealer whose wares are a bootlegged painkiller extracted from the noses of corpses.
The slightness of the film causes
many problems. As I mentioned, this is a film where Bill Moseley plays a sociopath whose related to Paris Hilton, a surgery addicted woman,
and Nivek Ogre, who plays another
psychopath who steals other peoples' faces to wear, who are barely seen
throughout. Even The Rocky Horror
Picture Show had downtime to build its world, but here for all its zest and
even a carnival freak show sequence, the film feels like it has barely built up
its many subplots, for me proof that whenever a film zips along constantly,
(new exposition, more gore scene, more, more) that's actually a bad sign for a
film.
Only Anthony Stuart Head as a result really stands out, mainly because
he possible got the memo of what was intended and could flesh it out. Everyone
else is merely over the top (Moseley,
Hilton and Ogre) or suffers the curse
of playing the bland protagonist (Vega),
with even Paul Sorvino as the big
evil not used as he should've been, leaving Head as having the most rewarding performance. Its
befitting a career that can go from Buffy
the Vampire Slayer to the comedy show Little
Britain, as he has the biggest challenge both to sing and play a character
with two sides, both the loving widowed father and the maniacal repo man who
repossess organs gruesomely, which he succeeds in. Even the fact he uses two
different voices, obvious but effective, has merit.
It sucks, in hindsight, as done
better Repo could've been a success
even if it was kitschy, be it classical soprano Sarah Brightman as a Goth Lolita dressed corporate opera singer
with holographic robot eyes to all the low budget graveyard/medieval sets,
alongside the Grand Guignol wanton gore. There's even a little innate elegance
dues to its inspirations - a large and prominent female cast, opera and
classical melodies in the score, and the costume designers and production
creators having a field day in general. It's just that, painfully, for the
entire attempt for a grandiose story - betrayal, inheritance - the film
struggles to get to the desired melodramatic heft. Even when it literally ends
on a stage within this adaptation of a stage production, Repo feels incredibly slight, leaving an admirable risk for Liongate and Darren Lynn Bousman to create but not a successful one.
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