Repo! The Genetic Opera

What a gleefully fantastic, ultra-camp and stylish musical this is. I'm not sure when the last time that I've seen a film as downright fun as Repo! The Genetic Opera was, it's an all singing pile of giddy joy from start to finish that had me immediately re-watching a few numbers right after it finished. It's a magnificent production, the set design, costumes and the fantastically cheesy and rocking songs are just infectious.

The story takes place in 'the not too distant future', in the aftermath of an epidemic of organ failure. In a culture rife with surgical addiction, people can finance new organs, but there's a deadly catch, missing a payment means the company sends out the repo man to take claim back your organs. Anthony Head plays one such repo man, a secret he keeps from his sick daughter Shilo (Alexa Vega) who gets tangled up in a larger plot concerning the company her father works for. It's a very grand and entwining story, filled with a lot of weird and wonderful characters.

Anthony is terrific here, he has an absolutely astonishing voice, and really puts it to great use, he's got incredible range and power. It's a fantastic performance, and I'd love to hear him sing more in future. The rest of the cast is terrific as well, especially Sarah Brightman and Terrance Zdunich (who also wrote the screenplay), but what comes as quite a surprise is that Paris Hilton shows off considerable talent, something I didn't except at all. Some people thought Bill Moseley was a rather poor singer, but I personally found him to do well in his role.

Director Darren Lynn Bousman (best known for Saw II - IV) really does a fantastic job here, in fact, everything I didn't like about his style on the Saw films he seems to have left aside here. There's still a fair bit of blood and gore in Repo! but it's played for laughs, and it's presented in a much more camp context, so those who didn't like the heavy handed content in the Saw sequels shouldn't be put off. It's the kind of silly, slapstick gore that you might expect from Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson in their prime, one moment has the repo man disemboweling his victim, reaching up into his chest cavity and using him as a puppet. It's a great scene that had me laughing uncontrollably, and the way Anthony Head played it was what really made it, expressing a moment of grim realisation after he's been enjoying his work a little too much.

Repo! is a film that seems to have people divided, I've seen a lot of mixed reviews, but it already has a lot of fans. It's either a love it or hate it, you're going to love the whole NIN by way of Tim Burton style, the whole cheesy Rock Opera saga and the gleeful gore, or it's just going to grate on you. For me, I can't help but love it, I find myself listening to songs over and over while writing this review, I just thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe not a must see, but this was just one hell of a fun film.