THERE probably aren’t enough futuristic Goth rock musicals, but “Repo! The Genetic Opera” is weak on a couple of things a musical needs: music and lyrics.
This demon nightmare takes place in 2056, when a sick girl (Alexa Vega) kept as a virtual prisoner by her crazy father (Anthony Stewart Head), who lost his wife to a rare disease, searches for her family’s twisted secrets. She gets sucked into the scheming of the chief (Paul Sorvino, with a cane and a ponytail) of an evil company that sells organ transplants and also sends repo men to rip out the organs of those who miss payments.
Meanwhile, the executive’s sons fight each other for their legacy, and Paris Hilton pops up in a cameo. You’re thinking comedy, but everyone takes things with a crazed earnestness that makes Italian opera look like “Mad Men.”
Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich’s songs, which suggest a childhood spent obsessing equally over Black Sabbath and Andrew Lloyd Webber, too often consist of one heavy-metal riff repeated endlessly as the characters deliver exhaustingly expository lyrics.
The smudgy pall cast over everything by director Darren Lynn Bousman (“Saw II”) might work for a five-minute music video, but it quickly becomes as tiresome as the general air of bombastitude.
Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (graphic violence, profanity, nudity, drug use). At the Angelika, Houston and Mercer streets.