WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Studio 666, currently out in theaters.
The Foo Fighters face monstrous demonic possession and bloody mayhem in the new horror movie Studio 666, with the horror-comedy drawing heavily from classic movies as Dave Grohl endures his most hellish threat yet. While everything from The Evil Dead to The Exorcist serves as visible inspirations, one major source of influence is Stephen King‘s classic novel The Shining and its cinematic adaptation by Stanley Kubrick. This link is felt right from Studio 666‘s inciting premise and carries its own devilish twist as the true stakes of the story kick into high gear.
Studio 666 has Grohl lead the Foo Fighters to record their latest studio album at a house in Encino, California, only to discover that the house is haunted as a demon possesses the normally amiable Foo Fighters frontman. As Grohl begins to grow more violently out of control and fully succumbs to the demon’s thrall, he becomes murderously obsessed with finishing the album — viewing it as his masterpiece — and ready to kill anyone he perceives as standing in his way during its production. This ultimately has Grohl turn on his longtime bandmates and friends, with a body count steadily rising in the scenic Encino home studio.
King’s The Shining similarly saw disgraced teacher and failed author Jack Torrance decide to relocate with his family to a remote resort in the mountains of Colorado to serve as its caretakers during the off-season. As the family tends to the abandoned Overlook Hotel, Jack becomes obsessed with finishing a manuscript he’s writing while the Torrances learn the dark history behind the resort, including the gruesome fate of the caretaker and his family before them. This leads to the Torrances discovering the Overlook is haunted, with the spirits possessing Jack and turning them on his family as he stalks his wife and son with the intent to kill them and appease the hungry ghosts lurking around the hotel’s premises.
Whereas The Shining is a searingly supernatural exploration of confronting one’s inner demons and the disintegration of family in the face of addiction, Studio 666 plays much of its scares for deliberately over-the-top laughs and self-aware camp. Rather than being menaced by Overlook Hotel-style ghosts, Studio 666 takes its possession from The Exorcist-inspired demons from Hell, with only a supernatural tome capable of restoring Grohl to his senses and end the hellish threat before he can claim more victims. In contrast, The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep suggests that the spot upon which the Overlook is built is itself haunted, with the hotel purged when it is set aflame and burned to the ground as Jack’s son Danny overloads the boiler room decades after his father’s death.
Loosely inspired by the Foo Fighters recording their 2021 album Medicine at Midnight and its own allegedly haunted home studio in Encino, Studio 666 provides a fun twist that pits the Foo Fighters against the forces of Hell. Like its other visible influences, it skewers the tropes prominently throughout these classic horror movies, and The Shining similarly is subjected to the Foo Fighter treatment to great effect. Dark history and haunted houses loom heavily in both stories, with Dave Grohl and Jack Torrance’s artistic drives taken advantage of by paranormal entities, resulting in bloody consequences.
To see The Shining’s influence on the Foo Fighters’ story, Studio 666 is out in theaters now.
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