Dave Grohl kills the Foo Fighters in the demonically-charged and incredibly disappointing Studio 666.
One of the most famous bands in the world – the Foo Fighters – need to make a new album, and because it’s their tenth, it’s got to be bigger and better than any they’ve made in the past. Driven by money and lacking morals, their manager agrees and hooks the band up with a house that’s literally haunted with rock history.
Caught in the grip of a creative funk, lead singer Dave Grohl feels a powerful energy in the place and talks his bandmembers into staying. What none of them know is that in 1993, the members of the ill-fated Dream Widows, touted as ‘the next Jane’s Addiction’, were found butchered in the house, and their killer – the lead singer – had taken his own life to try to rid himself of a demonic force that wanted him to write an endless song. Grohl’s end aim is now to write an endless song.
Demons abound. Gory hallucinations and diabolical voice-changes litter the band’s days. Eventually a chainsaw cuts two people in the throws of passion into four. This is not a recording studio – it’s a living nightmare. And as much can be said for the film itself.
The premise of a real-life band playing themselves in a comedic horror film is brilliant. Think of what Seth Rogan’s zombie film This is the End did for the spoof-your-famous-self farce: Jonah Hill cries all the time and Michael Cera is offensively crude while James Franco wants to take every last drug in the house before the Apocalypse ruins his party – hilarious! But the cast who play themselves are actors in real life; the Foo Fighters are musicians, and they’d be smart to remember it in future endeavours.
If Grohl and the band wanted this film to work, they needed some coaching by comedians. Sure, their timing may be impeccable when thinking in notes and beats, but their jokes and their delivery of them are awkward. No: painful. They expect the audience to think their quirks are so cute we forgive them their absurd trespass into cinema (original guitarist for Foo Fighters, Pat Smear, wears a night cap when he sleeps on the kitchen bench to be closer to his Doritos). Much could have been made of put-down dialogues as the band bicker like rock n roll teenagers, but it consistently falls short with a lot of ‘fuck yous’ and unoriginal references to dicks.
Perhaps hardcore fans of the Foo Fighters will overlook the disaster that Studio 666 is and turn it into a cult classic, but they’d be doing so with full knowledge that the film is utterly ridiculous and downright dreadful. On the upside, to the person who made the trailer to this B-grade film: you win! It’s the single solidly produced part of this mess of a project.
Reviewed by Heather Taylor Johnson
So bad it's sure to become a cult hit 1 star
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