OK, so the year is 2056. An epidemic of organ failures has swept the planet (for some reason) and in order to survive the people turn to GeneCo., a company that deals in organs. Organs are expensive as you could well imagine; luckily GeneCo has an instalment plan. The catch: Those who fall behind on their payments are hunted by a masked Repo Man (Buffy’s Anthony Stewart Head) who will stop at nothing to reclaim the company’s organs. Surgery is commonplace in this techno-Goth city, and addicts rely on an illegal (and florescent) painkilling drug that is extracted via syringe from the nostril of human corpses. Enter Shilo Wallace (Alexa Vega), the seventeen-year-old daughter of the Repo Man. Suffering from a rare genetic blood disease, Shilo leaves her bubble in search of a cure, and to unlock the secrets of her gruesome past… No, wait, it gets better. This story is told to us in song. Seriously.

I don’t really need to point out that Repo! The Genetic Opera has an amazingly original concept. Director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III and IV) creates a stylised setting reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s La cité des enfants perdus (fancy French way of saying City of Lost Children), Alex Proyas’s Dark City, even Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. Based on the stage play written and composed by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich, Repo is heavy with back-story. Bousman uses Tank Girlesque comic book interludes to keep the exposition from weighing down the narrative.

The actors do their best with the musical dialogue, but it is Anthony Stewart Head who really stands out. I’ve been in this guy’s corner for a while now, and not just because he battled vampires as Buffy’s mentor. He’s strong and charismatic, underrated and very underused. Whilst Repo is no Sound of Music, it does contain a few moments of greatness. When spoilt surgery addict Amber Sweet (played by a perfectly cast Paris Hilton) starts her big number in the climatic on-stage Genetic Opera, her face falls off before a booing crowd.

It should also be said that somewhere beneath all that violence and melodrama, there is a satirical warning that our society is relying more and more on cosmetic surgery. If there’s something about our physical appearance we don’t like, we can change it with one trip under the knife and… Whoa, whoa, whoa… hold on a second. Original concept, comparisons to City of Lost Children, social commentary! I’m making Repo sound like a masterpiece. It isn’t.

Lazy chorography is where Repo loses its step (puns are fun). The sleepy movement coupled with unmemorable songs keeps this from becoming the next Rocky Horror Picture Show (an obvious inspiration). There is an unparalleled lameness about Repo, but whilst it falls short of its goal, there is the nagging sense that this could have been something great. It all comes down to that old chestnut: Sometimes even with all the right ingredients things just don’t go right in the mixing bowl.
Two and a half stars.