What’s a book or movie that genuinely scared you?
Wyrd Outlook by Grogh — Ghostwritten by Vikki Vexum
Repo! Terrified Me. I Wasn’t Ready to Love It That Much. (For God’s sake—dead bodies became drugs you could shoot up?! WTF?!)
What movie or book has truly terrified you?
Repo! The Genetic Opera. I was terrified by how much I loved it.
I already enjoy a kiss of opera in my music. I hear it in Rob Halford, in Iron Maiden’s soaring theatricality, and definitely in Meat Loaf. Give a powerful voice enough room to get gloriously dramatic, and you have my attention.
But Repo! let the operatic elements march right up front and demand the stage. They weren’t taking a back seat. And I was swooning.
That collision was deliberate. Co-creator Terrance Zdunich described their approach simply: “Old opera, new industrial, right?” His writing partner Darren Smith discussed researching opera’s musical and storytelling structure, drawn to “the over the top nature of the Italian opera.” (reactormag.com, mediamikes.com)
And opera had bloody hands long before GeneCo opened for business. Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor pairs a murderous bride’s unraveling with breathtaking vocal beauty; Puccini’s Tosca builds its tragedy around torture, coercion, and murder. The elegant and the appalling already knew how to dance together. Repo! struck that same seductive nerve for me. (metopera.org, operadeparis.fr, metopera.org)
Which brings me to the second unsettling discovery: how much I wanted to linger in its dystopian world.
The gothic extravagance. The grotesque glamour. The music making the whole nightmare irresistible. I knew this was a terrible society to inhabit, yet some part of me was already admiring the scenery and considering a wardrobe.
That’s where the existential terror creeps in: How can a world so appalling make me long for it?
Perhaps you’ve felt that pull toward a haunted mansion, a fictional villain, or some beautifully doomed city. You recognize the danger while feeling the attraction. The nightmare has somehow learned your taste.
Repo! brought its opera fully forward and made its dystopia dangerously alluring.
I came prepared to be horrified. I wasn’t prepared to be seduced.
Full Transparency: Captain’s Additional Notes
I realize Repo! may have affected me more as a creator than I initially let on. For quite some time, a rock opera was one of my leading ideas for Ghostship Groggy. That ambition now lives more in the backdrop as I focus on a screen novel that gives me room for wild, strange, deeply layered world-building.
And in that world, the remnants of the dead help fuel the Deep Space Graveyard. So yes, there’s an echo of Repo! in what I make—and plenty of grave robbers.
Mine just happen to be pirates.
