Studio 666

By watching the trailer you know what's on offer, so let's not get too serious about this.

It's clearly a fun time with the Foos, nothing else.

The directing and cinematography was mediocre at its best, but I didn't watch this (and enjoy it) because I wanted to watch a cinematic masterpiece, I wanted to watch Dave Grohl and the gang being silly, and damn right I've got a lot of that!

As a surprising plus, I was quite impressed by the super gory deaths, Tom Savini style, fans of his B-Class movies will love this, some Mortal Kombat fatality stuff here!

I thank for the show and the fun, Dave always delivers!

Now I've got to go watch interviews and anecdotes about the making of, which I'm sure will be fun too!

I found out this morning that Taylor Hawkins passed away yesterday, the same day that I watched this film, so I wanted to open this review with a quick "rest in peace". I'm not sure how to segue from that, so I suppose I'll just start a new paragraph.

The greatest strength of 'Studio 666 (2022)' is arguably also its greatest weakness: the Foo Fighters and their wonderfully wonky acting. If there's any joy to be found here, it's purely because of the focal band and how much fun each member seems to be having. In fact, their energy is actually rather infectious and it makes for a rather sweet retrospective experience. In the moment, though, the movie isn't anywhere near as fun as it ought to be. It's goofy, gory and suitably self-aware, but it's also tonally inconsistent and far too long (it has about three different endings and ultimately settles on what's easily the worst one). It isn't particularly funny and it isn't particularly scary, either. It's a bit of a slog, to be honest. Pat Smear's almost permanent grin sort of encapsulates the picture's primary problem: it's always just one small step away from feeling fully credible. Every time it almost convinces you that it's a 'real' movie and you start to feel yourself getting lost in its B-movie pastiche, an unintentionally hokey or otherwise uncanny element will rear its head and set things right back to square one. Despite all this, it's never offensively bad. It's actually oddly endearing, even though it's undeniably subpar. It's never boring and its practical effects are surprisingly excellent. It has a couple of enjoyable moments, too. It's good enough for what it is, but not much more. 5/10.

Lots of laughs, lots of gore, lots of bad acting, bad editing and direction, but, despite all this, I had a lot of fun watching it.

Grohl is pretty good, the rest of the band, not so much.

To be picky, in a movie that is not meant to be taken too seriously, it is a bit too long and that is not how you wire a car, Pat!!

Some of these reviews are confusing. Did you think you were about to see an Oscar winning movie? This movie was a lot of fun and very entertaining. Was jump scary, which I wasn't expecting. Lots of fun and whole heartedly enjoyed it.

Came into it expecting exactly what it was - a goofy B-movie with plenty of comical gore, horror tropes, and amusing jokes made at the expense of each band mate. I got all of these, however these moments were far too sporadically spaced throughout the movie, with idle chit-chatting that took the plot nowhere and scenes of the band rehearsing and chilling out, eating etc that were much too leisurely employed and dragged out for what felt like eternities at times.

It's a shame because there were enough quality moments in this to make it a great 70-80 minute movie, but space these out over the course of nearly 2 hours and it's a totally different prospect. The latter part of the film contained at least 3 places where the movie could have ended satisfactorily, only for another rather pointless event or 'twist' to take place to stretch it out another ten minutes.

Overall a slightly missed opportunity, as with tighter editing it could have been a cult classic.