EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN - Vol. 37, March 2022

Everything Old Is New Again

Vol. 37 - March 2022

By “Doc” Hunter Bush, Podcast Czar

Good morning, afternoon, or evening. Welcome to Everything Old Is New Again, my monthly column covering Remakes, Adaptations, or Long-Gap Sequels coming to screens great and small in the coming month. If it’s based on a book, game, fable, or older TV series or movie - it’s EOINA material and I’ll endeavor to do my level best to find a great cross-section of films & series to talk about.

Except not this month. It’s been, to put it mildly, a busy month for me personally and I just have not had the time to devote the kind of attention I usually do to sniffing out EOINA fodder while still accomplishing the plethora of average responsibilities I handle, day-to-day. So this will be a relatively slim column, with only three films in the PREMIERES section and the usual EOINA-applicable recommendation in the SPOTLIGHT at the end. Apologies in advance, OR, alternately, you are welcome.

Here we go:

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PREMIERES - Films or series coming to screens great & small that meet the EOINA requirements

MARCH 4th

The Batman (dir. Matt Reeves)

Where: In theaters

Y’all know Batman. His parents are dead, he’s vengeance, he’s the night, yadda yadda yadda. Ok, and y’all are aware he began in the comic book format in 1939 and was created by Bob Kane & Bill Finger? Yes? Okay, so that’s all outta the way. Now a thing you maybe aren’t aware of, or maybe don’t think about a whole lot is Batman’s sobriquet of The World’s Greatest Detective. Superheroes get these kinds of titles/nicknames all the time: the Big Blue Boyscout (Superman), Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, the Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing (the rocky guy from Fantastic Four), etc. But sometimes they’re so ubiquitous that you don’t really focus on them.

Zach Snyder, for example, for sure didn’t bother thinking about it when he made the pretty abysmal Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, because not only does Batman not do any detective work at all, but we are actively shown Wonder Woman doing some. So the movie found a way for detective work to fit into its narrative, just not for the World’s Greatest Detective to be the one doing it. Cool. Well. It SEEMS that this is no longer the case. I mention BvS:DoJ because this current Batman began its conceptual life cycle as a vehicle for Ben Affleck’s version of Batso. Allegedly (I haven’t read any treatments, but if anyone would like to send me one, I have contact info at the bottom of the column) the Batfleck film would have focused more on a detective/noir vibe, and was originally being written by Batfleck himself, with an eye on him directing. Many, many changes later and what we have here with Robert Pattinson’s Batman seems to have maintained at least a passing resemblance to what was allegedly Batfleck’s take. Do I personally feel any need for another Batman relaunch? Nope. Not the tiniest twitch, but if it’s gotta happen (and it seems like studios are aiming to have some of their perennial characters get rebooted with a regularity that would put the tides to shame) then at least I’m glad to see a somewhat different take on the character.

But. When you say to me “a Batman movie that seems more focused on detective work”, my mind’s eye - drawing on a childhood spent absorbing the unbeatable Batman: the Animated Series after school every day - conjures up Batman, slinking around in alleys, in the rain, taking soil samples, maybe even using an honest-to-goodness magnifying glass and sussing out criminals. Matt Reeves’ The Batman seems to have a lot more stylistic DNA in common with Zodiac than, say, Kiss Me Deadly. This feels like a two steps forward, one step back approach to updating this character as, though you’ve got a somewhat novel, semi-fresh approach to the character, you’re portraying it thru a lens that appeals almost exclusively to the same some of usually-quite-toxic fans.

No disrespect to David Fincher, or Zodiac, or Matt Reeves, etc., but there is a certain kind of fan that seems to only respond to the perceived edginess of this style, rather than what the style is being applied to. But as is the case with all EOINA columns, I haven’t seen the thing for myself yet and I’ve been hearing some very positive word of mouth from MJ’s own Rosalie Kicks and Ryan Silberstein both of whose opinions I trust, so maybe this movie actually rules. I will definitely check this out eventually, but it is not worth it to me personally to visit a theater in person to see it.

18th

Cheaper by the Dozen (dir. Gail Lerner)

Where Disney+

Cheaper by the Dozen, as a concept, is actually inspired by a semi-autobiographical book written in 1948 by Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey describing their childhoods growing up in a family of twelve. The original film adaptation starring Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy was released in 1950. In 2003, the film was rebooted with Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt in the leads. Now, Gabrielle Union and Zach Braff have stepped up to the plate as the parents of 10 rambunctious kids. If I’m being honest, and I am; always, this looks like the usual Disney claptrap with a message about how being different doesn’t mean you’re less-than. That’s a great message, I just wish these kinds of movies looked like they were actively trying to be the best things they could be. With timely jokes about TikTok dances, the Fast & Furious franchise, and RuPaul’s Drag Race, this will definitely appeal to some folks but not me. Since I’d prefer not to end on a negative note, I will say that the kids in the trailer, from what I can tell, look like pretty solid performers. I was particularly impressed with (I believe) ten year old Mykal-Michelle Harris’ ability to deliver dialogue while doing a relatively complex TikTok dance. There are full grown adult actors who can’t perform dialogue and choreography simultaneously this well.

30th

Moon Knight (series)

Where: Disney+

Moon Knight has a very complicated history in comic books. Originally created to be the mercenary antagonist of the horror-adjacent title Werewolf by Night in 1975, he was popular enough to repeatedly get retooled. In 1980 he was given his own series, with a backstory stating that he was betrayed by another mercenary and left to die in Egypt. Taking shelter in a temple dedicated to the moon god Khonshu, he dies and is resurrected by the god, and tasked with becoming a protector in order to redeem his life of immoral actions. He returns to the U.S., and uses his mercenary bankroll to adopt multiple secret identities including a billionaire playboy, a taxi driver, and a police consultant, which gave him access to different tiers of criminal activity. In 1985, the series was rebooted and tweaked, giving the character multiple personality disorder (as it was known then) which he developed as a result of maintaining these separate cover identities (it was the ‘80s). In the intervening years, the character has died and returned, and his mental health has come into question repeatedly in some pretty ridiculous ways (for a while, his alternate personalities were his approximations of Spider-Man, Captain America, and Wolverine for example). It’s all very complicated in a distinctly “comic books” way, but as far as I know, more recently the different personalities are supposed to be due to a mental link to Khonshu (now believed to be some otherdimensional entity) and linked to the being’s four distinct personality phases (mirroring the phases of the moon).

With that business out of the way: the Moon Knight trailer shows Oscar Isaac as Steven, a man so sleep-deprived that he can’t always tell the difference between his waking life and his dreams. He’s also kind of a push-over, being bullied by his boss at his museum job which puts him in just the right place to answer a ringing cell phone where someone calls him Marc. My guess is that “Steven” is a cover identity (unless Marvel/Disney is going with the, as we now call it Dissociative Identity Disorder angle) that has somehow usurped his real identity of Marc and now whomever is on the other end of that phone call is going to activate him.

There’s some supernatural-looking locations and imagery, such as something that looks like a temple, an animated tattoo of the scales of justice, and a janky CGI mummy-esque being (perhaps Khonshu?). Also Ethan Hawke is there and he appears to be some kind of a religious leader or …perhaps a wizard?

So far the Disney+ MCU miniseries haven’t slayed me. They’re kind of hit and miss but Moon Knight looks like it could be fun. As always, I kind of hate the choice to use CGI when a cool practical effect would do the job just as well but this is the world we live in. Mayhap one day cool people who value craft will be making the Big Decisions and the Big Studios but for now it seems to mostly be nerds who are more focused on quantity over quality.

Moon Knight looks fun though.

SPOTLIGHT - Not always new, but always EOINA-friendly and always recommended

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) (dir. David Blue Garcia)

Where: Netflix

Please allow me to make my case for 2022’s The-less Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I covered the impending release of this flick in my last column and wasn’t super hot on it. But. Having thrown it on after a long day at work and watched it while enjoying a batch of homemade chili, I have to say: I had a good time. Let me get right out in front of this and say that I love the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (it’s a perfect movie) and I kind of think that none of the sequels are actually very good as sequels to it.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them! I fucking LOVE The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, but it is a wholly different animal from the original and that is what makes it so incredible. On a similar metric, I don’t think TCM 2022 is a great follow-up to tTCsM 1974 but I believe that if you think about it as a really fun slasher that’s heavily inspired by the original, you’ll be able to have a good time. The kills are creative and brutal, and are depicted with a nonchalance that reminded me of John Wick. There’s also some damn fine cinematography which includes some really fresh imagery when viewed against the whole of the TCM franchise. There are sunbleached desert vistas sure, but also those sunflowers that everyone has seen on the poster and across the internet, and there’s a legitimate honest-to-goodness actual chainsaw massacre happening in Texas here!

There are some really odd choices with regards to some of the characters and/or their backstories, and were I making the flick I would definitely have made different choices, but that’s not the case. Check it out and see what YOU think.

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Thanks for reading, as always. If you’ve got something you want to chat about, you can find me on twitter, instagram, or letterboxd, or just drop a comment below!

You can find more film opinions from me all across MovieJawn, but especially the Hate Watch/Great Watch podcast, which I co host with the lovely Allison Yakulis. We’re currently in the midst of Lovin’ with Luhrmann, a miniseries covering the feature films of director Baz Luhrmann that started as a two-parter and has expanded into a complete five-part coverage of his filmography. So on March 9th, check out our episode on Baz’s modern fable Australia (2008) starring Nicole Kidman & Hugh Jackman, followed on the 23rd by his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (2013) starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Carey Mulligan.

Thanks as well to the MJ crew for all they do and their continued support.

Until next time - Long Live the Movies!

"THE UNKNOWN MAN OF SHANDIGOR" (1967)

The Unknown Man of Shandigor
(1967)
Directed by Jean-Louis Roy
Written by Jean-Louis Roy, Gabriel Arout, Pierre Koralnik
Starring Daniel Emilfork, Marie-France Boyer, Jacque Dufilho, Howard Vernon, Serge Gainsbourg
Running time 90 minutes
Blu-ray available from Deaf Crocodile and OCN Distribution via Vinegar Syndrome

By Hunter Bush

I first encountered The Unknown Man of Shandigor last year, while covering the Fantasia international film festival. I personally have limited film fest experience, so this may not be unusual in a larger context but Fantasia has always made room for older film restorations alongside their usual, hugely impressive crop of genre fare from around the globe. In trying my best to watch & cover as many films as I possibly could, I found this. And I’ve been low key obsessed with it since.

The Unknown Man of Shandigor’s effect on me has been an insidious one; the film’s hold over me growing slowly and subtly. As the end of the year approached and I considered my favorite films seen within it, Shandigor came to mind more and more. Admittedly, it wasn’t made or originally released within the calendar year, but it was a first-time watch for me and, as far as I’ve been able to find out, is a relatively hidden gem. Ironically, or perhaps fittingly (?) the film has become as unknown as the man of its title, despite screening at the Cannes Film festival in 1967.

I’ve written about my thoughts on the film itself before for MovieJawn - I encourage you to read that review - so I’ll be as brief as I can in describing it. The Unknown Man of Shandigor is a spy film; it exists snugly within the bounds of the espionage genre, even today, but is obviously such a product of its time and a reflection of where spy films were in the growth as a genre. UMoS takes many familiar clichés and character archetypes and fiddles with them, inverting some, outright parodying others and allowing some to exist, played straight, alongside highly avant garde trappings and ideas.

By 1967, the spy genre was popular enough to be regularly lambasted. NBC’s Get Smart (arguably the height of spy parody, and co created by Buck Henry and Mel Brooks!) had been on the air since ‘65, as had Britain’s absurdist spy pastiche The Avengers (though it had premiered in the UK in ‘61). Even the somewhat infamous original Casino Royale was likewise about to his cinemas. Though all three of these examples (and, doubtless more that I’m forgetting/am unaware of) utilize different approaches to their sendups of spy stories, they all relied on their audiences family with the conventions of the genre: doomsday devices, mad scientists with evil lairs, femme fatales, gadgets, and casual sex. Just to name a few.

The Unknown Man of Shandigor tackles all those mentioned above, and more. Instead of a doomsday device, the mad scientist (the great Daniel Emilfork as Herbert Von Krantz) has created The Canceller: a device which can neutralize all atomic bombs. But peace is, apparently, just as undesirable an outcome as war for the involved espionage agencies (French, Russian, American, etc) as they’re all practically tripping over each other in an effort to swindle Von Krantz’s device away from him. Caught in the middle of all of this is his beautiful but melancholy daughter Sylvaine (Marie-France Boyer), in contrast to a traditional femme fatale, Sylvaine is wistful for the summer fling -style romance she had while on vacation …in a place called Shandigor. There are other inversions on the sort of “sexpionage” clichés recognizable to those familiar with Ian Fleming’s James Bond character, including the ex-Nazi turned American agent Bobby Gun (Howard Vernon) who is deeply committed to his monogamous relationship.

I could go on, but this article isn’t about the film, per se (as I said, you can read more about that in my previous review), it’s about the Blu-ray restoration by Cinémathèque suisse and Deaf Crocodile, distributed through OCD Distribution (via Vinegar Syndrome). So, this was the same transfer I was lucky enough to catch via Fantasia Fest and it’s absolutely gorgeous! Director Jean-Louis Roy and cinematographer Roger Bimpage worked in tandem to create a film filled to the brim with unique visuals, stunning locations, and avant garde compositions, all arrestingly realized in black and white. In one of the supplemental interviews, Swiss native Roy discusses his impetus for making this, his first feature film. By his estimation, the greatest association with Swiss cinema was documentary, especially those revolving around the Red Cross and Roy, a cinephile and admirer of the French New Wave, simply wanted to show the world that the Swiss were capable of much more. He rolled up his childhood fondness for comic strips into the trappings of spy, detective, and adventure novels. Interestingly, Roy only wrote the scripts, leaving the dialogue to Pierre Koralnik and playwright Gabriel Arout, a method similar to the process of the early Marvel Comics stories which would be drawn with only a broad strokes idea of the plot, with word balloons and text boxes to be filled in later.

I can’t overstate how striking and captivating the visuals here are. Similar to the Tarsem Singh film The Fall (2006), Roy (and crew) found locations that draw the viewer in, forcing you to pay attention to scenes that would otherwise be your basic shoe-leather, nuts-and-bolts plot moments, and thanks to the quality of the Blu-ray transfer, I could soak up every detail. The score and soundtrack, as well as the dialogue, are just as crisp. The orchestral score was actually composed by the director’s father, Alphonse Roy and it fits the film perfectly, adopting the conventions of 1960s spy films as much as the more avant garde aesthetics of the films Shandigor is referencing.

Finally, there’s the supplemental material. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing and when I like a film, and/or am unaware of how it came to be, I’ll gladly sponge up hours of essays and explanations. For the average film nerd there’s plenty to enjoy: a series of brief television interviews with director Roy and stars Boyer, Emilfork, and Jacque Dufilho elaborating on the artistic inspiration behind the film’s creation and the then largely unknown director’s methods for recruiting his cast. There’s a feature-length commentary track from film journalist Samm Deighan and an essay booklet from filmmaker and author Chris D. which both help to elaborate on the environment in which the film came to be, and the commentary especially was filled with interesting factlets - like how costar Ban Carruthers was once cast as Daredevil opposite Angela Bowie as Black Widow!

Like I said, for your average film buff, this is a generous bounty, but personally, being as interested in this film’s genesis as I am, I would have happily watched 4x as much. The comparisons that repeatedly come up for UMoS are with Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, so for lack of an overabundance of supplementary material, I suppose it’s time I rewatch the one and finally watch the other, hunh? I’m also interested in checking out the cast in some of the roles they were known for when Jean-Louis Roy cast them to potentially see what he saw. Marie-France Boyer in Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur, Howard Vernon in Jess Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z, Daniel Emilfork in Jean Brismée’s The Devil’s Nightmare; knowing that these performances may have specifically lead to the actors’ being cast in Shandigor is such a fascinating thread for me to follow!

I suppose, in a nutshell, that is what I love about film. In our daily life, we’re inundated with ads and discourse around the “must-see” movies of the day, and having been actively interested in film for many years there are of course many movies that I’ve put on my personal “to watch” list, but sometimes you find something that exists entirely outside of your bubble of awareness and watching them (really whether you like them or not) opens up new avenues into the truly vast universe of movie history. Restorations of these lesser-known, lesser-seen movies, especially with supplements to give them context, help expand the minds of cinephiles young and old. They have the opportunity to cut through all the noise and lead us to unknown cinematic lands. Which is beautiful.

There are no high-speed chases or blockbuster-size explosions, but there’s more idiosyncratic style in five minutes here than you’ll find in most entire films. In an era where we are accepting of genre-crossing fare on a larger scale than maybe ever before, The Unknown Man of Shandigor is an example of effortless style and mood; oozing cool from every frame. The Unknown Man of Shandigor would be worth buying even without the additional materials, however. The film’s trailer - also included on the Blu-ray - proclaims it “A molotov cocktail of thrills!” and I would wholeheartedly agree.

The Unknown Man of Shandigor is available on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.
You can find me on twitter, instagram, or letterboxd.

The Gospel of Brahms

The Gospel of Brahms

By “Doc” Hunter Bush


In the church of cinema, all are welcome.

When you watch a lot of movies as I do, it’s hard to find yourself really and truly reeling from a film. Not “surprised” in the usual “I’ve never seen that before”, or “I can’t believe we’re going there” ways. Numerous filmmakers’ entire filmographies are those kinds of films. No. I’m talking about a tricksier bit of cinematic magic: the kind where you think you’re well ahead of the movie you’re watching, savvy to all the coming reveals, when in fact you couldn’t be less on the trolley.


The Old Testament:


William Brent Bell’s 2016 slow burn thriller The Boy and 2020 sequel Brahms: The Boy 2 are exactly this kind of movie. I’ve spoken at length about my opinion of the original flick and my experience watching it for the first time (on the Hate Watch/Great Watch podcast, episode 45), but I’m always happy to do so again. I am not a religious man by inclination, but I will happily be the prophet of the Gospel of Brahms and to grow the film’s flock.

I implore you to seek out and experience these films for yourself before continuing, but for those still here: The Boy tells the story of Greta (Lauren Cohan), a young American woman taking a live-in childcare job for the Heelshire family in England. At first it seems like Greta will be caring for a doll which the Heelshires simply think is their deceased son Brahms - a phenomena called Animism - before Greta starts to think that perhaps Brahms is, in some way, a conduit for a spirit. The script by Stacey Menear even leaves breadcrumbs implying that the spirit in the house is not of the dead Heelshire boy but of a childhood playmate named Emily Cribbs who passed away under suspicious circumstances decades ago. This misdirection works so well because it appears as if it’s hidden, giving the viewer the feeling that they’re piecing everything together when in fact they’re ignoring much bigger, stranger clues hidden in plain sight.

The rules, for instance. Greta is left a list of rules that she must follow, lest she risk angering the temperamental Brahms. Some, such as Rule 6. Play Music Loud could be explained via supernatural predilections: maybe the afterlife is noisy? But others, like Rule 3. Leave Meals in Freezer seem to have no unearthly explanation. In the finale, it is revealed that Brahms’ shenanigans aren’t supernatural but rather the work of a human - albeit a very strange, obsessive, socially hampered one -  who has been living in the walls of his family home since childhood; a ruse intended to shirk any responsibility in the death of Emily Cribbs.

Watching the Brahms-the-man emerge from the wall (wearing a porcelain mask, as one does) is one of those transcendent film moments. To quote Rosalie Kicks “Your pants are shit.” I remember scooting forward until I was literally on the edge of my bed with my jaw wide open and my eyes even wider somehow. It was without a doubt one of the biggest viewing surprises in my adult life. So much so that I began to, slowly, quietly, devote my life to spreading the good word of Brahms.

The Boy was not a huge success. No one really made much of a fuss about it during its release. In fact, I only watched it on a whim via a streaming service some years later. The fact that there had been no chatter about a sequel or any inkling of an extended Brahms cinematic universe in all the time since release led me to presume that it would remain a secret, shared only among a chosen few. But lo and behold one day I heard the good word! A miracle had happened! Someone had greenlit a sequel! Huzzah! That sequel would end up being called Brahms: The Boy 2 and it would upend everything I thought I knew about Brahms.

The New Testament:


Though Brahms-the-man had apparently perished in the final moments of the Old Testament, here we are introduced to another traumatized family who end up finding Brahms-the-doll half buried in the woods around the former Heelshire estate and begin to experience similar, though less obtusely supernatural, activities. There are new rules this time, and more violence, and we learn that there is more to “Brahms” than we’d originally thought. Not only has Brahms-the-doll been around far longer than it previously seemed, but he’s always been associated with violence; killer children specifically.

Again, I urge you to seek out and experience both of the testaments for yourself, but having said that: In the climax of the New Testament, we see that the doll, previously thought to be only that, is actually the physical vessel for some gnarled, profane thing - headflesh pulsating, oozing fluids from it’s sphincteral mouth - despite being hundreds of years old! We learn that it whispers to its victims, who seem to historically be male, and take a kind of control of them where they are in its thrall and no longer fully in command of their own minds, nor actions. After seemingly destroying Brahms-the-doll, the family believe they have returned to some form of normalcy only for the film’s final moments to reveal that Brahms-the-thing still has its connection to son Jude (Christopher Convery).

Clearly we have not learned all there is to learn about “Brahms”.

The Gospel of Brahms


When the slasher franchises of the ‘80s lumbered their way into the theaters of the ‘90s, they took chances. Jason went to Manhattan, Hell, and eventually space; Michael Myers was revealed to bear an ancient rune which explained his supernatural singlemindedness; Freddy got meta. Your mileage may vary on how well any of these choices played out, but you have to admire the gusto. Both entries into the Boy franchise capture that same energy, the feeling of the rug dying to be pulled out from under you without a moment’s notice and with no care for your feelings on the matter.

In a better world, The Boy would have as many titles on the metaphorical video store shelf as Friday the 13th, or Halloween, or A Nightmare on Elm St. There should be a new canon of post-millennial slasher boogeymen that includes Brahms, as well as Ma, Krampus and The Empty Man (each from their respective titles), maybe even Gabriel from Malignant. Why not? I feel less and less like filmmakers are being constrained by their genres, relying on audiences’ familiarity with certain clichés to set up the twists and turns ahead.

Any film can have a “twist ending”, but few pull it off as satisfyingly as The Boy. Each time I rewatch it, I notice some new subtle detail that supports the ending. Not even The Boy 2 can catch that lightning in a bottle twice, but I still admire its swagger. To commit so thoroughly to an ending as ludicrous as “the doll was really hiding an unknown creature” is …impressive if nothing else. I doubt we’ll get any further entries into the franchise, but I’d’ve said the same and been wrong before. Where could these possible future installments lead? What could they reveal? The franchise has proven that nothing is really off the table.

During the pandemic lockdown, MovieJawn adopted Brahms as a mascot for COVID safety, imploring everyone to “follow the rules”. Neither myself nor MovieJawn condone the actions, methodologies, or objectives of Brahms he/they/itself, because that’s not what the Gospel of Brahms is about. It’s about surprises. About the audience being guided on a journey where you think you know your destination. About that visceral pants-shit fun you can only have with movies. Each film takes a big swing and, when viewed on their own, can be extremely entertaining viewing experiences that defy the jaded “seen it all” feelings that, sadly, many genre efforts tend to elicit. When considered as parts of a larger story however, they become fascinatingly strange; hinting at a great, dark and glittering chasm beyond the confines of familiar, easy, genre expectations.

With his serene porcelain visage and fancy lad sweater vest ensemble, Brahms just seems so reasonable. And he is, so long as everyone follows the rules. But perhaps you have to know the rules to know when you can break the rules. And that is the Gospel of Brahms. Amen.

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This piece was written for MovieJawn, a fabulous site where you can find tons of other excellent movie-centric writings, a shop where you can subscribe to the quarterly physical zine, or listen to me on the  Hate Watch / Great Watch  podcast! Support the MovieJawn Patreon here!
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"STUDIO 666" (2022)

Studio 666 (2022)

Directed by BJ McDonnell

Written by Jeff Buhler, Rebecca Hughes, based on a story by Dave Grohl

Starring The Foo Fighters

Running time 1 hour, 46 minutes

MPAA Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, and sexual content

By Hunter Bush

A lot of bands love movies. Especially horror movies. After seeing Studio 666, I’m certain that Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters is a fan of the Evil Dead movies. Even as I type this I’m reasonably certain that he’s appeared in some documentary or another talking about it. He kind of pops up like that a lot. The man is a pop cultural sponge.

Grohl and the rest of the Foos play themselves in the flick (based on an idea from Grohl himself), a band on the eve of finally recording their 10th album, if only Dave would stop dithering and commit to some studio time. Luckily, their manager (Jeff Garlin) knows just the place. There’s a house in Encino that has a little bit of a history that might intrigue the band. It seems that back in the ‘90s a band (the fictitious Dream Widow, supposedly “the next Jane’s Addiction”) holed up there and things, to put it gently, did not go as planned. They all died. Violently.

As the band prepares and Dave has to admit that he’s creatively constipated, things take a turn for the spooky as whispery voices, red-eyed smokey silhouettes, a creepy groundskeeper, and other familiar haunted house tropes begin piling up. Bodies too. With Dave obsessed with a gnarly new song, one that he MUST FINISH, the Foos begin to feel trapped and they won’t all survive!

Studio 666 opens with some nice, shocking gore that’s really well done and for a minute I genuinely wasn’t sure which side of the horror/comedy line the film was aiming to come down on. Was it a comedy with horror elements or a horror movie that was funny? Ultimately it falls just a bit on the lighter side of things, despite the quality and fidelity of the gore effects. Some of the comedy is completely carried by the performances, like Pat Smear mocking Dave Grohl’s admission of seeing the creepy groundskeeper on the grounds overnight: “The killer gardener of Encino…”, but some things like the repeated reference to the “Pearl Jam high-five”, were genuinely fun and funny. There were also some kind of lowest common denominator gags, like a semi-climactic battle that is just back to back nut kicks like low-blow Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em robots.

The humor works best for me when it genuinely feels like a Foo Fighters joint. Their videos for things like “Everlong”, “Learn to Fly”, and even “Low” showcase a sense of humor that feels specific to the Foos (and Tenacious D who somehow do not appear in this film - a bet I would have made and lost) and there are moments of that humor here. The post- cold open introduction scene of the band at their record label, and their initial arrival and unpacking at the house have it, and a pre-climax confrontation around the in-ground pool does as well. Throughout the middle of the movie that tone largely gets lost in favor of being just a horror movie. You see flashes of it here and there, like when the nosy neighbor (Whitney Cummmigs) delivers lemon squares dusted with cocaine, or when Dave, deep in his songwriter’s block, begins playing "Hello" only to have Lionel Ritchie himself show up and advise him “That’s my fuckin’ song! Get your own song! Nerd.” but for whole stretches, the tone switches to your run of the mill horror offering.

My single favorite contribution that Dave Grohl has made to pop culture is his appearance in the Fresh Pots video (compiled from behind the scenes footage from the recording of a Them Crooked Vultures album Dave played on) - which is in no way meant to devalue the literal dozens of other amazing things Grohl has had a hand in - and I kind of wish he’d brought a little bit of that energy and …Muppet-ish-ness (?) to his spiral into madness here.

This is Monday morning quarterbacking, but I wish there was more of the Foo Fighters DNA in this film (metaphorically). BUT. Having said that, I had a great time with this. If you’re looking for something to show to a new horror fan, or throw on after your next band practice, I all but guarantee this flick pairs well with beers, pizza, and friends. As I enjoyed my own Fresh Pots this morning, I repeatedly howled laughter at some goofy thing or another, and I honestly and truly hope Dave and the Foos make more movies.

Imagine if they just pumped out some weird little horror comedy every couple of years, like those straight-to-video Scooby-Doo movies but with the goofball Foo Fighters and their pals at the center instead of a cadre of nosy teens? They could star in a remake of KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park! Or let them make whatever the Foo Fighters version of Yellow Submarine would be! I’m just spit-balling, but clearly I have some ideas. Call me, Dave. 

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