STUDIO 666 (2022)

Studio:     Universal Pictures
Director:    BJ McDonnell
Writer:     Jeff Buhler, Rebecca Hughes
Producer:  John Ramsay, James A. Rota
Stars:     Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Taylor Hawkins, Chris Shiflett, Rami Jaffee, Whitney Cummings, Leslie Grossman, Will Forte, Jenna Ortega, Jeff Garlin

Review Score:

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Summary:

The Foo Fighters face supernatural slaughter when they try to record an album in a cursed mansion with a gruesome history.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In 1993, musician Greg Null brutally murders the other four members of his band Dream Widow in an Encino mansion where they were recording an album. Greg then hangs himself.

At Consolidated Consumer Records in the present day, Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Taylor Hawkins, Chris Shiflett, and Rami Jaffee of The Foo Fighters meet with their manager Grant Shill, who is angry over the band’s failure to deliver new music. Dave insists that he wants to do something different since this will be their tenth album. Saying he knows the perfect place for them to record, Shill calls realtor Barb Weems.

Barb brings the band to the Encino mansion where Dream Widow was murdered. Dave detects the house’s distinct vibe of death and doom, but declares that it is the right feel for their new music. Dave convinces his bandmates to move into the mansion while they record so they can finish the album faster.

Dave sees an ominous caretaker pruning bushes with massive gardening shears outside. Dave tries to confront the caretaker, but he mysteriously disappears.

The band’s roadie Krug oversees the setup of instruments and recording equipment. When he tries to rewire a mess of cables, Krug gets electrocuted and fries to death. The band discusses abandoning the location due to Krug’s death, but Dave convinces them to stay so they can dedicate the record to Krug and give his life meaning. While barbecuing later, Dave sees a vision of Krug’s charred head inside the grill.

The band meets their neighbor Samantha. Rami takes a romantic interest in her. Dave asks about the creepy caretaker he saw earlier, but Samantha claims there is no one else around.

Dave becomes frustrated by an ongoing bout of extreme writer’s block. Dave has a series of nightmarish visions involving Lionel Richie, Krug, and a horde of the caretaker’s demonic minions tearing out Dave’s intestines. In the waking world, dark figures continue to stalk Dave throughout the house.

Dave explores the mansion’s basement. Dave finds a mutilated raccoon and bloody gardening shears along with tapes of unfinished Dream Widow recordings. Dave becomes inspired when he listens to Dream Widow’s music. However, he starts to see nightmarish images while a disorienting voice growls in his head. The caretaker and his creatures attack Dave as a paranormal presence possesses him. Dave bumps into Pat on his way out of the cellar.

The rest of the band expresses astonishment at Dave’s newfound guitar skills. Dave claims his new song is in the nonexistent key of L sharp, which confuses the band.

Samantha brings over lemon bars for the band’s recording session. Sensing something strange about Dave, Samantha warns Rami that the house is evil before she rushes away.

Three weeks later, the band finds Dave’s behavior is growing increasingly bizarre as he forces them to continue working on one overlong song. Although the band worries about Dave losing his mind, Dave apologizes for his erratic actions and promises they can conclude recording if they just finish that song.

A delivery guy determined to give Dave a demo CD drops off food at the mansion. Demonic ghouls surround the delivery guy as the caretaker uses shears to cut off his head.

Frustrated that Dave’s song ballooned to 44 minutes and still doesn’t have an ending, Chris storms outside alone. Dressed as the caretaker and surrounded by dark demons, Dave uses the barbecue grill to burn Chris’ face before stabbing him to death.

Pat finds the delivery guy’s eviscerated body. When Taylor suggests calling the cops, Dave convinces everyone that they should just spend one more day finishing the record before they risk having the location shut down.

While Dave gnaws raw meat off of what they later learn are human bones, Pat shows the other band members that Samantha hid the message “the sacrifice feeds the book” on a plate of her lemon bars. After Pat also shows everyone the creepy basement where Dave first started acting strange, he, Nate, Taylor, Chris, and Rami secretly meet with Samantha to find out what is happening.

Samantha explains that the mansion where Dream Widow was murdered stands over a supernatural nexus. Samantha was a groupie who practiced occult magic with the band. Greg possessed a living book made of human flesh that reportedly held the secret incantations of Aleister Crowley. Something sinister took hold of Greg and he became obsessed with a song from the book whose Latin title translates to “The Tears of God.” Greg forced Dream Widow to try to complete the song because he believed perfecting it would open a portal for the demonic spirit inside him to cross over into this world. Greg stopped the song’s completion by killing himself, but he transformed into the caretaker, and that evil spirit now possesses Dave. Samantha reveals that blood feeds the book, which explains the sacrificed raccoon. She also instructs the men to find a passage in the book called “The Van Houten Protocol,” which will close the portal and send the spirit back to Hell.

Rami stays behind to have sex with Samantha while Nate and Pat look for the book and Taylor reluctantly goes to keep Dave occupied. From underneath her bed, Dave kills Samantha and Rami with a chainsaw.

Nate and Pat recover the book from the basement. Demonic specters chase the two of them back outside.

Taylor distracts Dave by recording his previously incomplete drum tracks. After Taylor finishes, Dave decapitates him with a cymbal.

Nate and Pat spy Dave feeding body parts into a wood chipper. Dave chases Nate and Pat back to the house where they are additionally terrorized by demonic specters.

Nate and Pat get into a standoff with Dave at opposite ends of the swimming pool outside. Nate and Pat invoke The Van Houten Protocol. An energy bolt fired from the book blasts Dave as he leaps over the water. The demons dissipate. Dave falls into the pool and emerges having returned to normal.

Dave violently vomits Chris’ undigested remains. The vomit forms into the caretaker, who begins fighting with Dave. The four murdered members of Dream Widow suddenly materialize. Former drummer Skye Willow recovers the book and the band’s ghosts use it to supernaturally explode the caretaker.

Nate and Pat try to hotwire a van so they can leave. Nate gets behind the wheel while Pat goes under the car to jumpstart it from there.

Grant Shill and Barb Weems show up at the mansion wearing cultist robes. While Barb strides toward Nate and Pat, Shill confronts Dave. Claiming the devil will make rock music relevant and dangerous again, Shill explains he has waited 20 years to finish that song and he needed Dave to do it. Dave insults Shill, so Shill attacks him and they fight.

Pat gets Nate to start the van. A rogue wire suddenly pierces Nate’s eyeball, causing him to run over Pat’s skull and knock down Barb too. Nate goes to check on Barb and she stabs him in the neck before collapsing.

Shill gets Dave to stop strangling him by taunting that he knows Dave finished the song. Shocked by his violent behavior, Dave realizes he isn’t acting like himself. Shill tells him, “You’re not Dave Grohl. It’s time for your solo career.” One year later, Dave prepares to perform to a massive crowd while still in a state of demonic possession.

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Review:

It probably goes without saying that if you’re a Foo Fighters fan, you’re destined to dig “Studio 666,” a silly, splattery horror-comedy where the band’s playful personalities are featured front and center for almost every minute of the movie. No matter how goofy it gets, the Foo faithful are certain to forgive flightiness and just have as much fun watching the film as it looks like the band had making it. Besides, if the Kiss Army can put “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park” on a pedestal of B-movie bizarreness, why can’t Dave Grohl and company indulge in outrageous cinematic antics too? Rock music and genre films could use more creatively kooky crossovers.

What if you’re not a Foo Fighters fan? “Studio 666” might make you one.

Despite Nirvana and then Foo Fighters being mainstays of popular music in my teens and twenties, neither band made much of a mark on me. Somehow I got the impression of Dave Grohl being an immature scrub who lucked into millionaire musicianship, so I considered his songs overplayed and overrated.

That changed when I saw Foo Fighters perform in 2007. I didn’t see them by choice. They were opening for The Police’s reunion tour. With my arms folded, I went into their show carrying a “well, whatever” attitude. At least I’d be able to say I saw a band that everyone else apparently loved for reasons I didn’t understand.

Now, I’ve seen live performances from eclectic artists ranging from Ray Charles and James Taylor to Judas Priest and U2. Alanis Morissette and King Diamond to Iron Maiden and Paul Simon. I can honestly say that Foo Fighters put on one of the best concerts I’ve ever witnessed and I was sitting so high up in Dodger Stadium that there was a sound delay between what was happening onstage and when the music reached my ears. Their energy was electric. Their rhythms were airtight. At one point, Dave decided he didn’t like the tempo and had everyone restart a song. Brian Wilson is the only other person I’ve seen orchestrate his band like that. I went away that night a converted man. Foo Fighters put on a performance that was professional, polished, and amazingly entertaining, and I was a bozo to expect a lesser outcome. I think if someone goes into “Studio 666” feeling about Foo Fighters the way I did prior to 2007, they could come away wearing the same smile I had after that Dodger Stadium show.

Like the band, the movie is very much a Dave Grohl-centered project. So of course, individual mileage will vary according to how much or how little entertainment someone gets out of Grohl himself.

Since Foo Fighters fans are already accounted for, I still say skeptics can be swayed by Grohl’s endearing persona, which translates terrifically into a naturally charismatic screen presence. A college kid could get away with writing a term paper that treats “Studio 666” as a metaphor for a celebrity’s ego growing increasingly chaotic as creative obsession destroys everyone around him. It’s just told as a cheeky terror tale of demonic possession involving an ancient Aleister Crowley grimoire, a supernatural portal, and a 44-minute song that the band can’t seem to finish writing. Grohl basically becomes a big kid eager to parody the pretentious rock star stereotype, and he does so with self-effacing style that’s game to give Foo Fighters some Marx Brothers dynamics as they exorcise any real-world animosity by barking scripted insults at one another.

It’s easy to warm to Grohl because of how good he is at comedy. He doesn’t merely recite what’s written. He has line deliveries down pat. There’s an early scene where a realtor points out bespoke lighting fixtures in the cursed mansion where the band plans to record their next album. Grohl moves between his marks and responds, “I do love a good sconce” with a perfectly pitched tone to make that joke land. Grohl is genuinely present in each make-believe moment, and he and director BJ McDonnell come prepared with a plan to make a real movie as opposed to a series of awkward skits.

The rest of the Foos come with varying degrees of chemistry, and equally variable acting abilities. “Studio 666” often only uses them for expressive reaction shots as cutaways, though they do develop into distinct characters closer to the climax.

You can almost tell which scenes were shot in what order. Guitarist Pat Smear goes from sporting a bemused smirk while lightly trotting in one scene to fully embracing the finale’s manic insanity with cartoonish physical comedy. Initial stiffness gives the sense that the band wasn’t quite sure what they were doing in this movie, but they figure it out by the end, or at least decide to go all in on getting wild.

No comedy ever rolls out nonstop bangers, although “Studio 666’s” gags hit more often than they miss. Predictable snips still offer mild amusement, like Grohl annoying a roadie (Slayer’s Kerry King) by repeatedly moving his snare drum a quarter-inch to get the perfect sound, or keyboardist Rami Jaffee exploiting the image of a lusting, yet spiritually synched, lothario looking to lay down the love on Whitney Cummings. Better bits include possibly ad-libbed banter about “Waterworld” being one of the best movies of the past 30 years and the band ending pow-wows with a “Pearl Jam high-five.” (“Jeremy has f*ckin’ spoken!”)

With Doritos products stuffed everywhere you look, “Studio 666” comes across as a pretty slight movie, though that’s by design. It has a super simple setup for a story not meant to be taken too seriously. Quick cameos from notable names don’t intend to amount to much more than momentarily funny distractions. Everyone probably thought, “Foo Fighters horror movie?” and understandably said yes before thinking to ask for a script.

Partly because willful cheesiness makes it play like a TV movie without actually looking like one, I ended up thinking of “Studio 666” like one of the vintage Scooby-Doo team-ups that featured Mama Cass or Sonny and Cher. As in, it’s an iffy amalgamation of music, mayhem, and the macabre, but you roll with the concept’s craziness because of the weird fun factor. Foo Fighters didn’t set out to remake Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” after all. “Studio 666” is closer to a satire of Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary “Get Back,” except with satanic slaughter wreaking havoc on the band’s ridiculous recording sessions.

Review Score: 70

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