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Rocker Dave Grohl morphs into a demonic vampire.

Credits

In Theaters

Cast

Home Release Date

Director

Distributor

Reviewer

Bob Hoose

Movie Review

The Foo Fighters are in a bit of a dry stretch, idea wise. Well, actually, it’s more like the six guys in this post-grunge band are licking sandpaper in the middle of the Sahara. They got nothing.

The group does, however, have a manager who’s screaming at them to come up with something for their 10th album. But all band leader Dave Grohl can dredge up are a few short guitar riffs … from songs he wrote 20 years ago.

So, the only thing Dave can think of is to take some inspiration from Led Zeppelin—the group that once recorded in a haunted mansion. Maybe something like that will give the Foos a fresh space, a cool sound, anything to get the juices flowing again.

It just so happens that their manager, a guy by the name of Shil, has just the spot in mind. It’s an old house. But it’s also the place where 30 years before another rock group, the up-and-coming Dream Widow, was mysteriously attacked and butchered in horrible ways. But that’ll just give the place atmosphere, right?

Yeah, and the crash of the Titanic was just a nice little ocean cruise.

When Dave and the guys arrive, the old house is pretty creepy and evil feeling. But, baby, it does have a sweet sound. The other members of the band are a bit reluctant, but Dave is quickly sold. And he convinces his bandmates to move in together and crank out their next masterpiece.

Man, what a sound this place has got. It’s like death and doom wrapped up in a box of desperation. It’s what heavy rock is made of.

Even when one of their roadies gets fried to death by an electrical short—his skin roasting like a pig on a spit—Dave doesn’t want to walk away. I mean, the now-dead-and-charred roadie wouldn’t want them to leave, would he? They’ll dedicate the album to him. “It’ll give his life meaning,” Dave proclaims.

The guys, again, reluctantly give in. After all, they do want to get this project done. And Dave seems to be so feverishly determined to stay in the house.

What the guys don’t realize, however, is that there are other people, no, other things that feverishly want them to stay.

Dark things. Otherworldly things. Spiritual things.

The kinds of hellish things that lurk in a movie called Studio 666.

Positive Elements

The various bandmates—whose characters are stereotypically and satirically played as one-dimensional dolts—genuinely seem to want to help Dave as he transitions into a demonically possessed killer. But there’s not much else here in terms of positive content.

Spiritual Elements

There is, in case you were still scratching your head about it, a demonic entity tied to the house that the Foo Fighters have occupied, as well as the music they and others create there. The ghoulish goals of this entity are designed to eventually open a direct portal to hell.

In that very grim light, we see murderous, red-eyed demons creeping out of the shadows here—possessing and/or attacking the humans in the mix. There’s also a book made of human flesh that was reportedly unearthed many years before and used to set the dark spiritual wheels rolling. People feed sacrifices and blood to this book and its entities as part of the surrounding rituals.

The main result is that Dave Grohl is possessed by a demon and slowly transformed into a hellish monster that butchers and eats his former friends. Studio 666 grins at this grisly idea—and winks at the suggestion that rock music has a direct tie to hell and its demonic things—as it splashes the screen with goop and gore.

Late in the movie a pair of guys tries to use the above-mentioned fleshy spell book to stop the demonic happenings. They initiate a new “ceremony” in the name of “Heavenly Father, Holy Spirit and rebel Son Jesus.” With this twisted chant, they turn a stagnant pool into “holy water.”

Someone vomits up a stream of blood and gore, and that horrific pool of tissue and goop then coagulates back into a macabre human form.

Sexual Content

Bandmate Rami Jaffee’s singular trait seems to be that he likes to lay around mostly nude in someone else’s codpiece-like G-string and think about hooking up with anything female. One of the other guys is caught watching porn on his computer late at night; we hear the foul-mouthed coupling on screen but don’t see it.

A female neighbor connects with the group. She wears lowcut tops and talks of once being a groupie. She and one of the guys eventually hook up. He strips to skimpy undies and she to a bra, and they crawl into bed to have sex. In the midst of the act, they are attacked and killed.

There are lots of crude conversations about male genitalia and sexual situations and acts, including “occult sex.”

Violent Content

Nearly everyone who shows up in the demonically plagued house that the Foo Fighters are recording in is murdered in some ridiculously gruesome way. In the opening scene, for instance, we see a battered woman who’s bloodied and crawling along the floor, one leg badly broken with a bone jutting out through her thigh. Someone then walks up to her and slams a hammer into her forehead. He proceeds to repeatedly slam and crush the small woman’s skull into a mushy pulp.

From there, the camera watches all manner of hyper-realistic-looking carnage that takes place throughout the film. Someone is electrocuted with blistering, sizzling-skin results. A man has his face smashed down on a hot grill, the skin searing and tearing free. A flayed and bloody raccoon gets nailed to a wall. A man is decapitated with a pair of rusty hedge clippers and then displayed in a grisly exhibit, his intestines wrapped and dangled about. Heads and bodies are crushed under vehicles, as well as pummeled with heavy objects. A couple in the midst of heated sex are gruesomely hewn in two by a chainsaw, their naked pieces falling open. Throats are slashed, people are stabbed.

Then there are various displays of cannibalism, one band member is reduced to a stack of gory bones as his flesh is greedily consumed. Someone gulps down a large glass of blood. A man explodes, rending his body into a geyser of body parts and goop. Disembodied legs and arms are tossed into a woodchipper, spraying the ground with gore. Men are kicked in the crotch repeatedly.

Crude or Profane Language

More than 140 f-words and 25 s-words join multiple uses each of the words “b–ch,” “a–” and “h—.” Jesus’ and God’s names are both misused a total of 15 times, with the latter being blended with “d–n” on three of those occasions.

Male genitalia is referenced some 15 times and people make offensive hand gestures.

Drug and Alcohol Content

The band members drink beer and booze like fish, and there are lots of beer cans and bottles stacked on table tops when they’re not being hoisted to someone’s lips. We don’t actually see anyone smoking, but there are ashtrays filled with cigarette butts scattered around the practice areas. The guys receive a gift of a plate of “special” lemon bars “sprinkled with cocaine.”

Other Negative Elements

Crude jokes abound.

Conclusion

If you’re a Foo Fighters fan who always wondered what a horror film featuring your favorite band might look like—you know, something that’s, maybe, equal parts lowbrow rock comedy and ghoulishly gruesome torture porn—you need wonder no more. Studio 666 covers those bases like a rubber chicken filled with cocaine and cannibal barf.

On the other hand, if you’re a Plugged In fan who’s wondered what kind of film might peg all our nasty content sections, well, this tedious, one-joke goop-fest fills that dripping abattoir, too.

If you have even the slightest hesitation about sitting through a film of mock demonic worship, exploding bodies, and geysers of vomit littered with heard-that-before one-liners, just do yourself a favor and say no. (Or how ’bout foo-ey?)

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Bob Hoose

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.