Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #16 Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

 Repo! The Genetic Opera has been on my list for a while and now, finally and emphatically, I can cross it off that list and never watch it again.  R!TGO is Type 2 fun for sure: I very much disliked it while I was watching it (also fell asleep for one scene but couldn't be bothered to go back for it) but now, after sleeping on it, I'm feeling much charitably inclined.

Since, as I said above, I fell asleep for a while - one would have hoped that a post-apocalyptic goth horror rock opera would have held my attention - I'm not super clear on the plot.  At some point in the future, the world experienced an epidemic of organ failures; one company, Geneco, began financing organ transplants and implemented fashion surgery and if you couldn't make your payments, your organs would get ripped out of your sad little body by Repo-men.  Our heroine is little Shilo (Alexa Vega), sick with a blood disease and kept cloistered at home by her doctor dad Nathan (Anthony Stewart Head, emoting for all he's worth).  The villain is the head of Geneco, played by Paul Sorvino; one of his awful children is played by Paris Hilton (who apparently won a Razzie for her role).  Also popping up is the amazing actual opera singer Sarah Brightman, who is Shilo's godmother and current indentured spokesperson for Geneco.  There's secrets and conflicts and quite a lot of blood.

R!TGO is what the goth/theater kids would have put together with a little (very little funding).  The sets are all flimsy and look like they've come right off a community theater stage (no offense to community theater, some of which can be quite good).  The "songs" are arrhythmic and not the slightest bit catchy: because this is an "opera" instead of a "musical," there are no spoken lines - everything is sung and so the "songs" are just sung dialogue, hardly the basis for a Top 40 hit.  It is definitely bloody and violent, with stacks of corpses, faces falling off and being pinned back on, disembowellings and guts flying everywhere.  Anthony Stewart Head and Sarah Brightman are powerhouses and the best parts of the whole thing.  And now I've depleted all the [nice] things I have to say about that.