Genetic rock opera movie#

While there are some excellent standout sounds (like “Zydrate Anatomy” or “Chromaggia”), the score is brought down so much by the monotony of the nearly-non-stop music that some really good performances, most especially Sarah Brightman’s in “Chase the Morning,” are easily dismissed as feeling like a backing track for an Amy Lee biopic. The soundtrack is composed by Darren Smith and produced by Yoshiki and comes across, for the most part, as very nu-metal and same-y. The superbly made cemetery and the holographic portraits of the Wallace household is a perfect example of creating a suspension of disbelief every time a goofier use of plastic-y digital animation (like a blood spray or projection eyes) pops up.Īs a musical, however, Repo! is a little less consistent.

Genetic rock opera movie#

The bloody animation prepares you for the gory gratuity of the rest of the movie and pulls artistic elements from alt-comics like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac or Tank Girl, which Repo! ties in with sparingly used and well-timed exposition comics throughout that tie the narrative together.īeyond that, Repo!’s sprawling cityscapes and macabre mansions make extensive use of 2008 CGI, which they had the mind to blend into physical sets and practical effects with fog and dynamic lighting. From the get-go, the comic intro-although very pulpy in style-sets the gothic and punky mood for the film perfectly. The film has a painstakingly well-developed atmosphere that wants to pull you into its world on the first viewing and has you detailing every prop in the background to figure out how the hell the art and costume departments pulled it off.Īnd they really did pull it off.

The costumes and sets are fantastic, ranging from plague doctor to leather daddy and from massive cemeteries to towering neon skyscrapers. The visuals for Repo! are, by and large, fantastic, beautifully blending gothic horror and cyberpunk into what is essentially a 90-minute nu-metal music video. The film follows Shilo as she is manipulated by Rotti to become the heir to GeneCo and learns more about her family’s past and her connections to the Largo family and Blind Mag. The film follows the intro animation by introducing us to Shilo Wallace, daughter of Repo Man Nathan, and the narrator, a graverobber who synthesizes Zydrate from corpses and performs regular surgery on Amber Largo. GeneCo is run by short-tempered tycoon Rotti Largo and society revolves around the commodity fetishism and hyperconsumption of GeneCo, such as the opera singer employed by Rotti, Blind Mag, and his three hedonistic children: Amber, who is addicted to surgery, and the painkiller Zydrate Pavi, who wears flayed faces as masks and Luigi, who is violently impulsive. The film takes place in a cyberpunk city in 2056 after an epidemic of organ failures causes massive loss of life and leads to megacorporation GeneCo’s take over, offering organ transplant loans and sending Repo Men to take the organs back (via extremely lethal and unsanitary means) when the recipients go into debt.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is a lot-of-movie stuffed in a very short runtime, and it opens fast and to the point, with a 2-minute comic book-style animation introducing us to the world and its major players.