31 Horror Movies in 31 Days: The Faculty

The Faculty (1998)

Directed by Robert Rodriguez

Starring Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Shawn Hatosy, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Robert Patrick, Famke Janssen, Bebe Neuwirth, Salma Hayek, & Jon Stewart.

Several teens attending an Ohio high school suspect something is wrong. Their teachers are all behaving out of character and drinking insane amounts of water. Students are starting to exhibit these traits as well. The school nerd Casey thinks it has something to do with the strange creature he found on the football field; an unknown and vicious miniature squid-thing. With some of his fellow students believing something has gone wrong, Casey and company set out to find the cause of this strange behavior before the teachers get to them too.

Robert Rodriguez made a typical Miramax teen horror movie early in his career, working with a screenplay from Weinstein brother’s staple Kevin Williamson. Luckily, Rodriguez’s luck held out and he got himself a real winner. Riffing heavily on the sci-fi tropes of mind controlling aliens and the alienation of high school, The Faculty actually manages to overcome the dullness of 90s horror films by being both smart and funny.

With a script rewrite from Scream franchise writer Kevin Williamson, the movie is filled with great dialogue and interesting characters. There’s plenty of quick wit, pop culture references, and self-aware deconstruction. While the meta-ness of The Faculty never reaches the level of Scream, it still has plenty of teens catching on quick to the body snatcher scenario. It’s that self-awareness that’s part of the reason the youthful protagonists are so much fun to watch. The other is there multidimensional characterizations. They all fit the teen character archetypes we know from movies, but they also have aspirations and aptitudes that screw with audience expectations.

The cast is composed of great genre actors and a few surprises. Robert Patrick, Piper Laurie, and Bebe Neuwirth all make great turns from troubled educators to unsettling alien puppets. The teens themselves have more characterization that’s brought out fairly well with the talented younger cast. Not a bad performance in the bunch.

The surprising cast additions come in the forms of Usher and Jon Stewart. Usher doesn’t get to do much of anything, rendering his inclusion in the movie pretty pointless. Stewart on the other hand gets to have some funny moments in between exposition and he’s in a gnarly fight as well. The odd singer-turned-actor inclusion is far outweighed by seeing the face of The Daily Show attacked with office supplies.

There are some things that haven’t aged well; the soundtrack and the CGI. The music choices are unfortunately products of the time period. Over-produced hard rock-pop becomes to de facto way to set the tone for many scenes and it gets annoying. The special effects have that lack of polish that all late 90s computer graphics suffered, looking unfinished and ancient. However, the few uses of models, puppets, and practical makeup still look pretty good.

The Faculty doesn’t show much of the Rodriguez flair present in his El Mariachi films or his recent work, but it’s still a decent little horror movie that’s worth a watch.

8 out of 10