Studio 666 Parent Guide

Now working on their tenth album, the Foo Fighters are running out of ideas. Under increasing pressure from the studio, front man Dave Grohl is stuck in a bad patch of writer’s block. Desperate to get the album made, the band decides to follow in Led Zeppelin’s footsteps, and move into an old house out in Encino to record the album, rather than one of the established studios in L.A. While the house is clearly disused, probably haunted, and undeniably creepy, it also has phenomenal acoustics – acoustics that provide exactly the new sound that the band needs. As work on the album begins, the band members start to notice strange occurrences like bad nightmares, shadowy figures, strange sounds…but the music has to get made. Even if it has consequences beyond what anyone would have thought possible.

Horror comedies are all plagued by the same problem. The goals of horror films and comedies are fundamentally antithetical to one another. And that’s not to say that you won’t find funnier moments in a horror film – in fact, they’re necessary to break tension sometimes – but that’s a nearly impossible balance to strike through a whole film. Studio 666, despite planting itself firmly in the comedy camp, still manages to have better horror effects than half of the actual horror movies I’ve seen in the last year.

It is brazenly a comedy, focusing on the weird interpersonal dynamics between a bunch of aging rock stars in a haunted house. Grohl spends his screen time gnawing on the scenery (sometimes literally), while his perplexed bandmates try to get to the bottom of the problem. The problem for audiences is that following the story requires a base level of familiarity with the band – fans only, for this film. If you don’t know the band, you’re not going to be able to maintain a lot of interest, especially since none of them are terrific actors. But that’s not their day job anyway.

The horror, on the other hand, is absolutely gruesome. Messy murders abound, and horrifying spectral figures keep popping up to go “boo” in the night. This is where the film really earns its Restricted rating. Dismemberment, mutilation, decapitation, occult rituals, some cannibalism…it’s a little bit of a lot, at times. There’s also a veritable blitz of profanity, as the film contains no fewer than 165 f-bombs in a mere 106 minutes. But for the specifically targeted audience of Foo Fighters fans who like a good ol’ gory horror romp, this is going to fit the bill. For the rest of you? Maybe just stick to something a little more accessible and a little less gory…like The Evil Dead, for example.