CONTAINS SPOILERS AND MINOR CONFESSIONS OF IGNORANCE OF SOME ASPECTS OF MODERN POPULAR CULTURE
I'll admit it, I'm not huge on modern music. On a good day if I'm listening closely I can just about tell the difference between The Spinners and The Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk and The Kings Singers, Nirvana and The Nolans. Most of what I listen to is film scores - which is a narrow niche on one level but actually covers a wide spectrum of styles - and I generally like an orchestra rather than what I understand is known amongst the young people as a "popular beat combo". I don't necessarily knock it, but it's not really for me. Not all of it - I have an inexplicable liking for some disco music, and some isolated songs from the 1980s have made their way onto my Spotify playlists (currently playing: Separate Lives by Phil Collins; don't judge me), but you can't listen to every band any more than you can watch every movie or read every book: you try a few things and filter out what doesn't appeal to you. Pop and rock generally doesn't, any more than cutesy romcoms or gothic bodice-rippers.
Given their name, you'd have expected a horror movie in which The Foo Fighters play themselves to be about alien spacecraft, but Studio 666 is actually a surprisingly gory splatter movie in which the Foos have to record a new album in an old mansion that was once the site of violent deaths and which may still be home to demons and evil spirits. More deaths occur almost immediately they move in, there's a raccoon crucified in the cellar, and shadowy red eyed silhouette monsters hover around as frontman Dave Grohl is compelled by a creepy gardener to record an absolutely terrible 44-minute song that will open the demonic portals. And what's with the weird rock chick next door?
It's from the director of Hatchet 3 and the gore (which looks mostly practical) is upfront and plentiful, but it's never meanspirited or sadistic. Even the double chainsawing highlight is more comedic in its excess rather than nasty, and it's really too silly to be taken seriously. Rather, it feels like a throwback to late 80s and 90s rubbish hardrock/gore movies like Trick Or Treat or Black Roses. There's also a priceless cameo from a pop music legend that even I recognised immediately and mercifully it hadn't been spoiled for me in advance.
Studio 666 goes on too long by at least fifteen minutes, and the acting (from people who aren't actors) isn't great by any stretch, though Grohl himself is kind of fun. And I can't tell if the big terrible rock song is terrible because it's supposed to be deliberately terrible for comic effect, or it's just terrible. But in an era of wimpy 15-certificate jumpers it's nice to see a full-on gore movie that boasts a blood-red 18 at the start and harks back to the schlock we were watching thirty years ago; no less than John Carpenter did part of the soundtrack (and also shows up briefly) and the main credits are even in Carpenter's usual font. Gorehounds nostalgic for the Golden Age of Fangoria-approved splatter should love it; personally I had way more fun than I was expecting, and maybe if I was more into the music and the Foos themselves then I might have enjoyed it even more.
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