Studio
666
2022
Director- B. J. McDonnell
Cast- Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear,
Chris Shiflett, Rami Jaffee, Whitney Cummings, Will Forte, Jeff
Garlin, Leslie Grossman, Kerry King, Lionel Richie, John Carpenter, Jenna
Ortega
The rock
band Foo Fighters are trying to produce their 10th album but lead singer
Dave Grohl is suffering from a severe creative block and can’t think of new
material. In an effort to inspire their creativity, their manager sets them up
to record in a now empty Encino home
that was once the site where several successful bands recorded. Unfortunately
it was also the site of several murders when the leader singer of the band
Dream Window brutally massacred his bandmates.
The band
is not thrilled with the arrangements but Dave runs roughshod over the group,
talking them into living in the house for a month while they record. Dave can
sense there is something special in the house and hopes it will unblock his
creative constipation.
While
exploring, he finds an old reel to reel tape from the band Dream Window. Upon
playing it, demonic forces are unleashed that possess Dave. He is compelled to
write a song, a song that when finished will unleash terrible Satanic powers.
The best word that I can use to describe this movie is “odd.” Horror-comedy is a difficult tightrope to walk anyway without adding the element of the Foo Fighters playing fictionalized versions of themselves. à la Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. The movie is more of a parody than an actual horror movie, poking fun at many horror tropes, like pointlessly staying in an obviously deadly environment. Don’t expect this to be a musical like Rocky Horror or Phantom of the Paradise. The music is a plot device not the star of the show. Having said that, Foo Fighters did record a song as the fake band Dream Window for the movie and it genuinely sounds like thrash metal.
There
were many places in the movie that seemed like inside jokes, some that I got
and some that I didn’t. Broadly there are horror jokes and music jokes (like
Dave discovering a new note, “L sharp”) but there were other jokes that were
over my head that probably required a more in depth knowledge of Foo Fighters or
rock music.
The band
members are the stars of the film and the acting performances are about what
you would expect but they have some help. Will Forte and Whitney Cummings help support
the comedic efforts. Horror fans may recognize Leslie Grossman from numerous
episodes of American Horror Story. There is also a cameo by Jenna Ortega (The Babysitter Killer Queen and the new Scream relaunch) who is on her way to
becoming a Scream Queen in her own right. Of course, horror fans will recognize
John Carpenter, who is no stranger to music, as the studio engineer mixing the
band’s recordings.
The
selling point for the film, at least for horror fans, in the creative old
school gore. There are lots of really disgusting, bloody deaths in the movie,
several that will cause you to laugh out loud. Also, I can say that I really
didn’t know which direction the movie was going to go next which is a rarity in
today’s movies.
Fans of
horror-comedy, or just odd movies, will want to check it out. Fans of Foo
Fighters, or just old timer Generation Xers, will probably want to check it out
too. I can remember owning Nevermind on cassette in 1991 and it was somehow
comforting to see that Grohl was looking as old as me.
