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Studio 666 Review
Image Credit: Open Road Films
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Cast:
* Dave Grohl as Himself
* Taylor Hawkins as Himself
* Pat Smear as Himself
* Nate Mendel as Himself
* Chris Shiflett as Himself
* Rami Jaffee as Himself
* Whitney Cummings as Samantha
* Will Forte as Restaurant Delivery Guy
* Jeff Garlin as Jeremy Shill
* Leslie Grossman as Barb Weems
Story: Legendary rock band Foo Fighters move into an Encino mansion steeped in grisly rock and roll history to record their much anticipated 10th album.
If you’ve ever seen a Foo Fighters music video, you know that the band has a tendency to get cinematic with them. “Everlong” is probably the best example, but there’s also “Walk,” “Long Road to Ruin”, “Learn to Fly”, among others. So when I saw the trailer for Studio 666, I just assumed it was some video project to promote a secret album. Dave and the boys do these kinds of things all the time. They just had an EP of disco covers as The “Dee Gees” just for the hell of it. The Foo Fighters have reached a point in their careers where they can literally do anything they want. If it works, great. If it flops, they move onto the next thing.
So it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that they filmed a feature-length horror-comedy in the fall of 2019. Because of course they did. I mean why not, right? Are you going to tell Dave Grohl he can’t make this movie? He’s clearly living his best life, as is the rest of the band. It shouldn’t surprise me, and yet it still does because I honestly thought the movie was a joke. It would be a short film at best. Then it got released to theaters. So it was a real movie, in my favorite genre starring one of my favorite bands. Of course I was in.
There’s a real sense of amusement with watching this movie, which is loaded with untrained actors riffing and getting involved in bloody shenanigans. I’ll just say that regardless of whether or not the film itself is good, it’s definitely odd. The leads are a group of untrained actors. Sure, they only have to play fictionalized versions of themselves, but it’s still a tall order to ask them to carry an entire film. Then you have the backup cast, which is also strange. Several people known for their comedy and then a few cameos that really come out of nowhere. The title them was done by John Carpenter. Yes, that John Carpenter. Director of Halloween. I’m aware he does music too, great music, but it’s just another point in the favor of this movie being different than your average horror-comedy.
Things kick off basically how you’d expect. The Foo Fighters are preparing to record their tenth album and they’re told to go to an abandoned house. Apparently the acoustics are to die for. While there, Dave has trouble coming up a song and discovers a melody, and something older, that perhaps he should have left alone. What follows is a lot of gory carnage that just happens to feature one of the biggest bands in the world.
You can see right away in Studio 666, which apparently came from a story Grohl came up with while making Medicine at Midnight, the love for two things: horror and rock n’ roll. It kind of turns the process of a band that is “creatively constipated” on its ear. After all, we’ve seen that movie already. Arguably, that movie doesn’t get any better than Some Kind of Monster, and that wasn’t even fiction. So naturally it’s played for laughs here. The Foo Fighters have been together for years, we know they love each other. So watching them bicker is part of the fun.
As a horror film, this was never going to be scary. No one in their right mind would expect it to be. So instead it loads up on the kills, with lots of nasty, violent deaths. Without really spoiling anything, there’s a chainsaw death here that would put most Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies to shame. Gory kills work in the same way as a joke, a punchline of sorts at the end of a set up. So it tries to mix the blood and humor and mostly succeeds.
When the horror stuff starts, you get to see lots of crazy scenarios you didn’t think you’d see before. Obviously it would be rude to spoil them, but the trailer gives you an idea. Want to see Dave Grohl get possessed by a demon? Sure! Want to see the Foo Fighters get put in life-threatening situations? Okay! Want a comedy with bloody kills, cannibalism and sweet drums solos? That’s a really specific request, but here you go! It really just feels like everyone involved wanted to make something fun, and that is appreciated.
That’s the biggest point in this movie’s favor. It is fun. It’s weird that it exists, but it’s fun. You can tell that the band are enjoying themselves and the veteran cast they surround themselves with are able to do the heavy lifting that needs to be done. Don’t make Pat Smear give exposition other than “the sacrifice feeds the book” over and over when Whitney Cummings can do it instead. It plays to the bands strengths, like their senses of humor and chemistry. This really does feel like a passion project of sorts, which makes it enjoyable even though it is definitely flawed.
The flaws are really that the jokes are really hit or miss. Many of the spoken banter falls flat, in the sense that it feels like in-jokes among the band. The dialogue can feel a little false at times because it feels like words are being strung together just to say something funny. There’s an exchange in the beginning with Jeff Garlin that drags on far too long because of this. That’s not to say the movie can’t be funny. There’s some slapstick and visual gags that work really well. And little moments like Pat having nowhere to sleep or Rami turning out to be a horndog shine through.
The biggest problem is perhaps the length. There’s always this sense that this probably could have been a short film, or at least fifteen-to-twenty minutes shorter than it was. By the time it gets to its third or fourth ending scene, it just kind of fizzles out. Horror-comedies, like slasher movies, have a sweet spot run time and this goes over that mark. Perhaps Taylor calls it halfway through the film when he says their “epic song” should just fade out as songs did in the 70s. That’s kind of what this does. It just sort of ends and we go to the credits.
That said, Studio 666 is an amusing time at the movies. The filmmakers and the band wanted to make something fun and that shows. It also succeeds for the most part. It’s every demon possession horror comedy you’ve ever seen, but it just happens to star the Foo Fighters. That alone will tell you whether or not you’ll want to see it more than this review could.
