Summary:
After a wave of organ failures sweeps through the human populous, a genetics company begins manufacturing artificial organs. But if the recipients of those organs can’t pay, the company sends in a Repo Man to take their product back. A musical!
My Thoughts:
I have an embarrassing admission to make: years ago, I used to love this movie.
I remember seeing a trailer for this movie and thinking it looked absolutely bonkers. I rented it, and watched it with a group of friends who instantly fell in love with it’s depraved insanity… It had been a long time since I’d seen this, and I knew that if I rewatched it I would find it less appealing than I did in years past. However, I wanted to see if it had any merit at all, or if it was an absolute travesty.
At the time of its release, I was still in high school, and I had only recently discovered my love of weird horror films, and that discovery couldn’t have come at a worse time, because the 2000s were a pretty rough time for the horror genre. Horror went through a phase where the majority of the films opted for grossing out the audience with gore instead of thrilling the audience actual story, and that was in many ways thanks to the “Saw” franchise and other franchises like it (“Hostel”).
I actually think the first “Saw” film is decent, and “Saw II” is, from what I remember, an all right film as well (though, actually the second Saw film was a standalone script reworked to include Jigsaw after the success of the original). After the second Saw film, the Saw series devolved into a meaningless exercise in torture-porn, devoid of any meaning. I think the later entries in that series actually set back the horror genre for a while, but, when I was in high school, when those films were popular, I have to admit I thought they were kind of cool. After going to film school, and living a decade longer, my taste evolved (thank goodness, or I’m sure none of you would be reading this review)…
Why do I bring up the Saw franchise? Well, Darren Lynn Bousman, the director of this film, also directed “Saw II”, “Saw III”, and “Saw IV”. As you can imagine, this film is filled with all sorts of gory effects, and from a technical standpoint those scenes look decent. I think those were the scenes that Bousman really liked shooting. There are some cool ideas, and some of the actors, the ones that seem to actually care, put in decent performances…
The rest of this film is an absolute mess.
“Let the monster rise!”
After an increase in organ failures plagues mankind, Geneco, a genetics company, begins producing organs and selling them to people to prolong their lives. But soon, the head of Geneco, the merciless Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino, “The Rocketeer”) pushes a bill through congress legalizing the repossession of organs. A man named Nathan (Anthony Head, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” TV Show) is forced into a life of a Repo Man, while his daughter Shilo (Alexa PenaVega, “Spy Kids”) is forced into a life of solitude due to a blood disease. Meanwhile Largo’s worthless children Pavi (Kevin ‘ohGr’ Ogilvie, “The Devil’s Carnival”), Luigi (Bill Moseley, “Army of Darkness”) and Amber (Paris Hilton, “House of Wax”) all squabble over who will inherit their dying father’s fortune and company.
“Repo!” is based on a stage musical of the same name. I have no idea how faithful this adaptation is to that musical, but I can assume a lot of things were removed in order to fit into an hour and thirty-five minute run time. There are dozens of plot elements that are brought up and then never addressed again, some of which you would think would be incredibly important to the overall story. For example, we learn in a comic book style flashback that Largo poisoned the antidote that Nathan had prepared for his sick wife, and when Nathan gave his wife the poisoned antidote, she died. This leaves Nathan feeling as if he messed up his antidote and murdered his wife, but we as the viewers know that Largo is responsible. That plot point is never addressed again. Why bring it up if there isn’t going to be used to spur Nathan into anger? It doesn’t make any sense. It felt much like the revelation in “The Room” where one of the character’s mothers quite casually says, “I definitely have breast cancer.” There are a ton of other plot holes and inconsistencies that don’t make sense, but let me talk about some of the other elements that fail.
Most of this film looks like it was built on a soundstage on an incredibly small budget. The sets are bare and ugly; the costumes are tawdry, ridiculous, and sometimes a bit sexist. But let me give examples; the final scenes of this movie are supposed to take place in an opera house (shocker!), but all of the audience members (perhaps thirty of them) are sitting in stackable chairs. How am I supposed to take that kind of production design seriously? To make matters worse, the lighting was absolutely horrid. In almost every scene there were blown out spots or underexposed parts; plus some shots were slightly off as far as white balance goes. It looks like Bousman knew the raw footage looked like garbage so there are a lot of scenes that are heavily color corrected in a stylized way; that doesn’t do anything to save the film, instead it just make it look cheaper. Just take a look at some of those photos in the review… you think those are low quality images? Nope… that’s just how this movie looks.
Now, I understand that when you’re making a lower budget film, you’re restricted heavily by you can afford. I’m sure this movie is nothing like what Bousman originally intended, but a lot of that is on him. This movie could’ve been a bit better if it devoted as much time to the story as they did to the graphic violence and over-sexualized dancing nurses, which brings me to my next point. There were so many scenes of needlessly sexualized material. Why do we need a scene where Paris Hilton writhes around in lingerie in the rain? I don’t know, but there’s a whole song devoted to it. The only good part about Paris Hilton being in this movie at all is when her face literally falls off her skull and an entire audience boos her. That’s the kind of movie this is.
As much as I ragged on this movie, there were a couple of things it did right. For one thing, I think Anthony Stewart Head does a pretty decent job as the Repo man. I think his performance was easily the best of all the cast, while Paris Hilton was easily the worst. In my opinion, and I don’t know if this is true or not; most of the actors seemed to realize that this film wasn’t going to be good during the filming, and they sort of hammed up their performances. Head at least tried to the end, even if the rest of the film fell apart.
Verdict:
It’s funny to go back to this film, which I used to really enjoy, and find it to be almost unwatchable now… But hey, I guess that’s what I get for discovering what real horror movies are. Why would I watch this garbage when I could watch “Rosemary’s Baby”, “Possession”, “Hereditary”, or “The Witch”?
I feel I’ve outgrown “Repo”, and after this last viewing, I can’t say I’ll ever go back.
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