Mark Reviews Movies: STUDIO 666

Studio 666, Open Road Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 24, 2022

No one will mistake the members of Foo Fighters as professional actors, which isn't to say they're bad in the band's debut movie Studio 666. It's just to say that the movie, which sacrifices music for a straightforward but comedic venture into horror, doesn't play to the influential and beloved group's strengths.

As musicians, there isn't any doubt as to the band's strength, and in the movie, when the group puts aside their alternative rock roots for a much harder sound, the sense of a fun—if, within the plot, demonic—jam session is sort of infectious. You can see the guys enjoying the creative process and riffing off one another, even if it's under the coercion of their now-possessed front man Dave Grohl.

This band has been working together in some form or another across the span of almost 30 years. The music has been great, and it probably takes a certain level of camaraderie and professional humility for the six members to embrace and obviously enjoy the idea that they'll all be obliterated—in body or in spirit—within a haunted mansion (Grohl is credited with coming up with the idea for this story, so he obviously has a degree of amused self-awareness).

It's kind of entertaining to watch all of them try their hands at acting, and they possess and display enough ease as individuals and as a collective that nobody looks uncomfortable. As for what each of them brings to the screen in terms of personality and how that fits into this horror yarn, the movie and its makers have let down Foo Fighters.

That story revolves around a mansion in Encino, which has been abandoned for about 25 years. Back then, a heavy metal band started the process of recording their next album in the house, but due to "creative differences," the group's leader brutally murdered his fellow musicians, before killing himself (The opening scene, in which someone pounds a hammer repeatedly into a woman's skull, prepares us for plenty of grisly, over-the-top gore).

In the present day, Foo Fighters are preparing to record their tenth album, and Grohl wants to ensure that it's special. Their manager (played by Jeff Garlin) has the perfect idea for where the band should record: that damned, abandoned mansion.

As for the rest of the plot, it's routine stuff, assembled from broad horror clichés and inspired by a couple of specific other films (An eventually doomed delivery man, played by Will Forte, stands in the light of the demonically inhabited house, and there's a living book, with a twisted face on the cover made of human flesh, filled with cursed passages). The screenplay, written by Jeff Buhler and Rebecca Hughes, gives the band a lot of time to hang out and joke around with each other. That is until Grohl becomes possessed by a demon, convinces his bandmates to record a seemingly never-ending song (in the newly discovered key of L), and violently disposes of each musician, one by one, as soon as each one has finished his part.

Director BJ McDonnell allows the band all of the time they need for that initial sense of togetherness, even if it's a lot more than the pacing of this simple story can stand and with a hit-or-miss sense of humor that leans more toward the misses. In addition to Grohl, we meet drummer Taylor Hawkins, rhythm guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Nate Mendel, lead guitarist Chris Shiflett, and keyboardist Rami Jaffee. Of the six, Grohl, obviously, has the most to do, and he's having some obvious fun, playing the egotistical id of a demanding and mercurial leader.

Within the remaining five, Hawkins gets to show off his drumming talents, while Shiflett disappears too quickly and Mendel might quietly be the best actor of the bunch. Only Smear, as an overly laid-back guy (He makes a bed of the kitchen counter, and nobody's surprised to learn he was having a late-night snack outside the night Grohl becomes possessed), and Jaffee, as a New Age-esque flirt who tries to woo the vaguely eccentric neighbor (played by Whitney Cummings), make much of an impression in terms of overt, definable characterization, though.

This is a major miscalculation on the part of the filmmakers, who clearly want these musicians to show off more than their firmly established skills, while failing to give the majority of the band members that opportunity to shine. The whole thing gradually becomes a series of increasingly bloody and ludicrous scenes of carnage (an outdoor grill cooking flesh, a double chainsaw bifurcation, an incident involving hotwiring a van from below, etc.), while the surviving bandmates try to determine how to release Grohl from the demon's clutches.

Studio 666 is funnier as a concept than it is as movie. With only intermittent music and a decided lack of much for the band to do otherwise, it's an underwhelming introduction of Foo Fighters to the world of movies.

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