There's just one game in town if you want to hang out with the Foo Fighters and get killed by them: "Studio 666," a ridiculous horror-comedy that appears to have provided the Foo Fighters a time-consuming little project to help them get through the pandemic.
The entire film exists to pass the time while hanging with one of the world's most popular rock bands as they discuss their love of horror movies, act like dorks, and consume an astonishing amount of Doritos.
The Foo Fighters, Doritos snack chips, and Whitney Cummings star in "Studio 666," in descending order of screen time. There are so many Doritos on-screen in "Studio 666" that we can only assume that one of two things happened.
The plot is simple: the Foo Fighters, the best-selling rock band known for songs like "Learn to Fly" and "This is a Call," are set to make their tenth album, which must be unique. They rent a vast mansion in Encino, California, with a legendary history in the music industry of wild parties, famous rock bands, and a whole lotta corpse, inspired by Led Zeppelin, who famously recorded an album in a castle with — as frontman Dave Grohl describes it — "wizards and dragons and crap."
Grohl is suffering from "musical constipation," and can't seem to come up with a riff that isn't plagiarized from his huge history. When one of their roadies is electrocuted and dies as a result of the building's shoddy wiring, he persuades the rest of the band to disregard the glaring red flags and finish at least one song at the murder house in honor of their lost colleague.
Grohl soon discovers an unholy altar in the basement, complete with the apparently false, but nonetheless very horrible remains of a sacrificed raccoon, as well as the ruins of the ill-fated previous residents' recording session. Grohl decides to continue their magnum opus, a song that quickly expands from a promising start (Grohl invents a new key dubbed "L Sharp") into a never-ending concept record with pagan images and, finally, blood sacrifices.
"Studio 666" may have some gross-out moments — to the film's credit, there is an awe-inspiring chainsaw death — but it isn't attempting to make anyone lose sleep. BJ McConnell ("Hatchet III"), the film's director, peppers the picture with funny references to scarier horror films like "The Evil Dead" and the original "Friday the 13th," and appears to be particularly inspired by the carnage. But this is a film about hanging out with the Foo Fighters in a house, and the Foo Fighters are ready to deliver.
"Studio 666" is a joyful and entertaining comedy about a group of musicians that genuinely care about each other and don't mind appearing like idiots when it works. Their resounding "Pearl Jam High Five!" followed by joyful yells of "We're still alive!" comes straight out of classic live-action children's shows like "The Kids from C.A.P.E.R." Rami Jaffee, the keyboardist, either didn't mind being represented as a lusty New Age space-case who can tell how long a corpse has been dead by listening to its vibrations, or intentionally desired it. Pat Smear, who is continuously disheartened, is denied a bedroom in the gigantic mansion, but he cheerfully sleeps in the kitchen because it is obviously closer to the Doritos.
Then there's Grohl, who created the story for "Studio 666" and initially portrays himself as a slightly out-of-touch dweeb who loves sconces and isn't afraid to tell you about it, but who eventually succumbs to the dark side of celebrity and transforms into a selfish meanie who murders his bandmates with their own barbecue if they get in the way of his mojo. Sure, he's the bad guy, but he's also completely laid back in every manner, much like the rest of the ensemble. You can't be angry with him when he murders people because the film isn't angry with him. The entire "Studio 666" project is a joke on us.
Also, and this may seem impolite to bring up, like a guest at a party complaining that their favorite flavor of Doritos isn't on the snack table, but there's a certain amount of disappointment in watching a brand-new film starring the Foo Fighters as themselves that isn't a musical or at the very least packed with brand-new tunes. At the very least, the foreboding rock track they're recording during "Studio 666" is a satisfying musical highlight (written by horror legend John Carpenter, alongside John Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies). But it's primarily for show, an excuse to collaborate with a horror legend on a lighthearted horror-comedy
.It's surprising how far McConnell's picture can get by on originality, star power, and Doritos alone. However, after approximately an hour, "Studio 666" hits a wall and spends the following 50 minutes staggering around in a stupor. It's difficult to remain emotionally invested in a film where everyone is clearly just having a wacky time making home movies with their friends, and nobody has a story they desperately needed to tell, or an important topic of conversation on their minds (although some of the goriest gore may be a turn-off for casual Foo Fighters fans); it's just hard to remain emotionally invested in a film where everyone is clearly just having a wacky time making home movies with their friends, and nobody
Imagine being invited backstage during a Foo Fighters show and spending so much time eating Doritos and talking to the band about John Fasano's "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare" that you'd prefer go home right now. That's what "Studio 666" is like. However, for an hour and a half, and in occasional flashes of grotesque inspiration, as the picture nears its violent conclusion, the film plays a lot like "A Hard Day's Night" if it were directed by William Castle and sponsored by Doritos. What else could possibly be a selling factor if that isn't it?
