Studio 666 Trailer: Making An Album Is Hell

Rock 'n roll has long been friendly to the occult. It's a relationship whose lore stretches all the way back to blues pioneer Robert Johnson's fabled crossroads deal with the devil in exchange for musical mastery, and the entire heavy metal genre is infused with it (don't even get me started on Black Sabbath). You can't listen to an album like Pink Floyd's "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and tell me with a straight face that rock musicians aren't intensely spiritual. 

The demonic-rock connection continues onscreen; in 2015, "Deathgasm" followed two feckless teens who accidentally invoke a demon through a metal record, followed by a more serious, grim turn towards the devilish in Jonas Åkerlund's thriller "Lords of Chaos" in 2018. Just two years later, Marc Meyers' comedy-horror "We Summon the Darkness" saw Satanic cultists dispatching victims around a heavy metal show. For rock musicians, inspiration can come from sex and drugs, as always, but as Art Weingartner says in "The Burbs," "Satan is good. Satan is our pal."

If there's anyone who understands this dynamic, it's Dave Grohl. Grohl is the former drummer for Nirvana and has been the lead singer and guitarist for Foo Fighters since 1994, churning out hit after headbanging hit for decades. He's even played Satan himself in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny" back in 2006. Ten studio albums, ten EPs, and a ton of chart-topping singles put incredible pressure on the group to keep making bangers, a fear Grohl exploits in "Studio 666," a comedy-horror feature that looks like "The Shining" with amps and casual cannibalism. Based on Grohl's story and written by Jeff Buhler and Rebecca Hughes, "Studio 666" is directed by BJ McDonnell ("Slayer: The Repentless Killogy") and stars the band, Jenna Ortega, Will Forte, and Jeff Garlin. We've got a trailer of the movie ready for your eyes and ears.

The story is a tale as old as time: an established rock band (Foo Fighters, playing themselves) rents a sprawling, spooky mansion in upscale Encino to record their tenth album. The muses aren't whispering into Grohl's ear, but other voices do, and the singer's writer's block is cleared when he surrenders to the forces residing in the home. Unfortunately, bodies start stacking up as the band races to complete their album and it becomes unclear whether or not they will survive long enough to release it, let alone go on tour.

The trailer looks to be more in line with the goofy gore of "Deathgasm" and "We Summon the Darkness," with lively characters having a good, rocking time and thumbing their noses at the satanic panickers. Anyone who has watched Grohl and bandmate Taylor Hawkins' induction speech for Rush at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or viewed Grohl's moving words at Lemmy Kilmister's funeral knows just how heavily music flows through his veins. In the same sense that Jack Black and Kyle Gass bring joy to music lovers through the sheer, deafening power of rock in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny," so will the Foo Fighters in their rude mutation of "A Hard Day's Night." Rock and roll will never die, baby.

"Studio 666" release in theaters on February 25, 2022.