To-day, Herrington High School, to-morrow, the world. Such seems to be the thinking of the alien invaders in 1998's The Faculty, a science fiction horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez. It's not on the level of Desperado or From Dusk Til Dawn in Rodriguez's '90s output but it still has a lot of life in it, particularly in its editing and cast.
What a cast. The titular faculty has Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth, Salma Hayek, Jon Stewart, Famke Janssen, Daniel von Bargen, and Piper Laurie. And every one of them has something fun to do.
I especially liked Famke Janssen changing from a shy young teacher, apparently struggling with her attraction to a delinquent student, into a ball buster whose head can walk independently from her body.
Josh Hartnett plays that delinquent drug dealer while the other students staging a final resistance to the alien threat include Clea DuVall, Jordana Brewster, and Elijah Wood. Even Elijah wood's dad is played by Christopher McDonald. Nearly everyone in this movie is someone I remember from a good role in another movie or TV show.
Like Scream, a lot of dialogue in this movie is spent comparing it to other horror and science fiction, particularly Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This was in the years before people realised that acknowledging within your film that it's not original doesn't actually make it more original. The movie would've been fine without that self-aware stuff. The cgi near the end is weak but Rodriguez was still mostly in top form as an action director.
The Faculty is available on The Criterion Channel. I know, a Robert Rodriguez movie on Criterion? What next, Tarantino? Could it actually happen?
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