Movie Review : Studio 666 (2022)
A horror movie starring the Foo Fighters ranks pretty high in the list of things no one ever asked for. Of all the rock and metal bands who could surf on the connection between music and Satan our parents and various religious leaders have been trying to make for decades, the Foo Fighters are among the most normal looking ones. They’re from the Journey school of just-dudes-in-a-band-playing-music. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, though. Sometimes the best things are those who no one ever thought of.
B.J McDonnell’s film Studio 666 is on the right side of history in that regard, but only slightly. It’s unnecessary, but pretty cool.
The premise of Studio 666 is pretty straightforward: the Foo Fighters move into a haunted house to record a new album and an uninspired Dave Grohl gets possessed by the spirit of a frontman who made a deal with occult forces and ended up killing his whole band. The guy start the laborious process of trying to write into existence a chaotic song inside Dave’s head, except it doesn’t really have a beginning or an end. Pat, Chris, Nate, Taylor and Rami start investigating what the fuck’s wrong with their main man.
Rock & Artificiality
It took me a while to make up my mind about Studio 666. Because it is obviously and transparently a vanity project by Dave Grohl, who thought it would be cool to feature in his own horror movie. The band members aren’t natural actors and they sometimes don’t seem to take the endeavor seriously at all. Pat Smear in particular reaches Bill Murray-levels of detachment at times and… it’s kind of great? Studio 666 is so transparent about being a fictional construction, it’s allowed not to play by traditional rules.
Although the Foo Fighters have built a career out of earnest anthem rock, the idea we have of them is very much a construction and Studio 666 is a playful deconstruction of the wholesome dad rockers image they’ve cultivated over their career. The plot is straightforward and predictable, but the theme is clear: inspiration is a fucking tyrant and it’s difficult to cultivate and image that seems as effortless as their own brand. There is not a second of Studio 666 that isn’t Kanye West level of metaphorical.
Studio 666 wears the skin of a horror film (in the goriest possible way), but it’s a film about creative anxiety at heart and how it can ruin harmony between people who need to click together night after night on stage. It’s not very subtle about it, but I got a kick out of Dave Grohl illustrating his performance anxiety in such a fun, earnest way. Although this film avoids earnestness in its content, it doesn’t avoid it in its intent. Dave Grohl cannot escape who he is, even when possessed by dead rockers.
Rock & Satan
Another fun, albeit unsubtle aspect of Studio 666 is how it openly makes fun of rock music clichés. The band runs through every single one of them, from the boozy, Dionysian parties to animal sacrifice and Satanic ritual, it is portrayed by director B.J McDonnell as something that kind of happens to you instead of something that you'd intentionally chase and I thought it was pretty funny. McDonnell uses the fact that the Foo Fighters don’t look like rock stars at all to great comedic effect.
Studio 666 feels very much like an anachronistic movie who would’ve had a lot more success had it come out in 1995 or so, but it also addresses anachronistic points in a very contemporary manner. It illustrates the link between Satanism and rock n’ roll as fortuitous while not denying the idea of the Faustian deal. It was obviously slapped together fast, but it is overflowing with spontaneous creativity and good-natured playfulness. It isn’t This is Spinal Tap, but it isn’t a cynical fiasco like Spice World either.
*
You kind of have to be a Foo Fighters fan in order to make complete sense out of Studio 666. if you’re indifferent to the band and to rock culture in general, the film is going to come off as needlessly crass and juvenile. These aren’t bad traits per se, but without the counterintuitive context of the Foo Fighters' career it’s not that different from other hastly done low budget horror movies. Either way, I doubt anyone will remember it in ten years from now and perhaps it was by design.
