Excuse me while I fangirl. ‘Repo! The Genetic Opera‘ is ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show‘ meets ‘Bladerunner‘. On crack.

Between adrenalin stimulating video games and super concentrated doses of caffeine, the genY lovers of rock musicals need a little bit more than rock n roll in drag these days. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt. So how do you up the ante on a sub-genre of a sub-genre of over-hyper attention deficit disordered people like me?

1. Speed it up. So fast you don’t have time to breath while watching the dystopic post-apocalyptic world unfold.
2. Add lots more music. Goth rock is best. Also, it should be loud. Very, very loud.
3. Go over the top. Way, way over. Like, so far over, Mario has skipped the castle and is caught in the Lost Levels for all time.

(Yes, that is the formula for making an instant generation Y cult classic. Filmmakers: take notes.)

And that’s exactly what Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich did when they invented Repo! almost a decade ago in rock clubs around the country. Along with director Darren Lynn Bousman they were able to turn what started as a 10 minute rock opera into a full length feature.

So what is ‘Repo! The Genetic Opera’? First and foremost, its a rock opera. Its like Phantom of the Opera had a love child with NIN. (Oh, and Sarah Brightman is in it too.) After that its just rather… insane. (But then again, what wasn’t insane about Dr. Frank-N-Furter growing a man in a rainbow fish tank, turning people to stone and, oh, surprise! he’s really an alien from the planet Transylvania. How anyone could call Repo! unbelievable and still accept RHPS is beyond me.)

Spoilers beyond…. (more…)