The Faculty

Plot synopsis:
One evening at Herrington High School in Ohio (home of the Hornets), several teachers and Principal Drake leave after discussing the school's budget. When Drake returns to retrieve her keys, Coach Willis becomes increasingly erratic and stabs a pencil through Drake's hand when she attempts to leave. Drama teacher Mrs. Olsen emotionlessly stabs Valerie with scissors as Drake flees the school.
The following morning, the students arrive, including Casey Connor, the dedicated but perpetually harassed photographer for the school newspaper. Connor is the unappreciated assistant to spiteful Delilah Profitt, the paper's editor-in-chief and head cheerleader. Delilah's mistreated boyfriend Stan Rosado is contemplating quitting the football team to pursue academics. Zeke Tyler is an intelligent yet rebellious student repeating his senior year. Tyler sells, among other illegal items, a powdery ecstasy-like drug he manufactures and distributes; he is confronted by Miss Elizabeth Burke, who expresses concern for him over his illegal activities. Naive transfer student Marybeth Louise Hutchinson, befriends self-styled outcast Stokely Mitchell. Delilah has spread rumors that Stokely is a lesbian though she has a crush on Stan. Marybeth develops a crush on Zeke.
Casey notices a strange creature and takes it to science teacher Mr. Furlong, who believes it is a new species of cephalopod-specific parasite called a mesozoan. Delilah and Casey hide in the teachers' lounge to find a story. They witness Coach Willis and Ms. Olsen force one of the creatures into the ear of school nurse Ms. Harper. They also find the body of Mrs. Brummel. Casey and Delilah flee, and Casey calls the police. Principal Drake claims nothing is wrong and that Casey is seeking attention.
The next day, Casey tells Delilah, Stan and Stokely he believes the teachers are being controlled by aliens. After Zeke and Marybeth tease them about their theory, Mr. Furlong confronts them. Furlong suddenly becomes defensive and attempts to infect them. Zeke cuts off Furlong's fingers and injects his homemade drugs into Furlong's eye, apparently killing him. Zeke takes the five to his house, where he experiments on Casey's specimen. He discovers it needs water to survive and can be killed by his drugs. Zeke makes everyone take his drug to prove they are uninfected humans. Delilah is revealed as infected, and she destroys Zeke's lab and most of his drug supply before escaping.
Acting on Stokely's speculation that killing the alien queen will revert everyone to normal, the group returns to the school, where their football team is playing and infecting opposing players. Believing Principal Drake to be the queen, they isolate her in the gym and fatally shoot her. Stan confronts the coach and team to see if it worked but becomes infected. Zeke and Casey retrieve more of Zeke's drugs from his car. Casey leads infected students away from Zeke, who encounters Miss Burke in the parking lot and seemingly kills her while escaping.
At the gym, Stokely becomes suspicious of Marybeth during a conversation about pretending to be what one is not. Marybeth subsequently reveals herself to be the alien queen. Earlier on, she faked taking the drug. Casey and Stokely flee to the swimming pool, where Stokely is injured and becomes infected. Zeke and Casey hide in the locker room, where Marybeth reverts to her human disguise. She explains she is taking over Earth because her own planet is dying. Marybeth transforms back into her true form and hurls Zeke across the room into the lockers, knocking him out. Casey seizes the drug and tricks the queen into following him into the retracting bleachers, trapping her. Casey stabs the drug into the queen's eye. The queen infects Casey with her dying breath, but Casey almost immediately returns to normal upon her death. Casey returns to the locker room and finds Stokely and Zeke alive.
One month later, everyone has returned to normal. Stan and Stokely begin dating, and Zeke takes Stan's place on the football team (while Miss Burke affectionately watches him practice). Mr. Furlong has miraculously survived the attack, now sporting an eyepatch and bandages on his hand. Casey begins dating Delilah and is considered a local hero.

Tags: mystery, violence, cult, horror, flashback, satire, suspenseful, entertaining

Review:
Cameos from Usher, Summer Phoenix and a seemingly pointless role for Harry Knowles (he's been bought!) don't spoil this.Overall as a sci-fi horror it's pretty good if not great  there are better films around.
But what really makes this film special are the main characters: a delightful group of funny and interesting students, who have to cope with the trials of high-school life as well as the demands of defending the Earth against an insidious alien invasion.If you know the other films of Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn) you will find another film which displays the same wit and assured lightness of touch that makes this director's work such a pleasure.Great Stuff!.
Fun and Interesting characters and cool visual effects are the key to this Sci-Fi Thriller, which is largely based on 'The Invasion of the Body Snatchers' I won't introduce the characters here, as the movie introduces (Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Jordana Brewster and Elijah Wood's characters) really well as the students at Herrington High, they each have their own individual personalities that evolve as events in the film unfold.The Faculty is littered with top names like Robert Patrick, Famke Janssen, Bebe Neuwirth and Salma Hayek who all begin to behave strangely, un-nerving the students.A small pocket of students begin to believe in a conspiracy among the teachers and it's up to them to save the world from invasion.Great performances from the cast (Josh Hartnett in particular), a fun script and a cleverly re-written story all conspire to make the Faculty a cracking 100 minutes of all out entertainment.7/10.
Anybody who *doesn't* know this but saw and enjoyed the Scream flicks or the "I Know ..." movies is likely to enjoy this.No, it doesn't really have the same underlying Red Scare theme of the original Bodysnatchers (or Arthur Miller's Crucible), although it *is* about what every modern high school movie seems to be about: how much their presumed roles imposed on teens makes their lives painful, and how great it is to unleash those strictures.
Oh, and any 'homophobia' attributed to the movie (as opposed to some of its high school student characters, just as occurs in real life) is questionable at best."The Faculty" is no more and no less than another entry in 'new geek cinema,' slightly more intelligent and self-referential than your standard SCI-FI Network fare.
However, after about 20 minutes of set-up, the faculty really starts to become an alien species, as they are assimilated by water-loving parasites with very bad attitudes and a kind of group consciousness straight out of Invasion of The Body Snatchers and Star Trek's Borg.
Especially impressive are Elijah Wood, Piper Laurie, Robert Patrick, Josh Hartnett and Clea DuVall.Like most of Rodrigues' films, The Faculty never loses its sense of humor, and pulls off its own absurdity with artful visualization and a tight, driving pace.
So, that's where I started my obsession with horror flicks, but on to another subject...I also enjoyed Kevin Williamson's I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and as you could probably tell, I was equally excited to see what this movie would be like.
Originality is not The Faculty's strongest suit, the basic plot being a reworking of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (with a touch of Night of the Creeps and The Thing chucked in for good measure), its characters your typical high-school movie stereotypes (The Jock, The Nerd, The Outcast, The Stoner, The Head Cheerleader, The Hard-ass Coach, The Tough Principal etcetera etcetera.) and even the movie poster displaying very little imagination.But although this kind of thing has been done many, many times before, the film still proves to be hugely entertaining thanks to a sharp script by Kevin Williamson, assured direction by Robert Rodriguez, great special effects (particularly the practical MUFX by KNB), and a cool cast including Bebe Neuwirth (40 and fabulous), Jordana Brewster, Salma Hayek, Elijah Wood, Robert Patrick, Clea DuVall, Famke Janssen (hubba, hubba), Usher, Laura Harris (naked!) and Piper Laurie.
Hell, even Josh Hartnett and his bad hair didn't rankle me that much, which is a change.The movie opens brilliantly with an amazingly tense scene (Williamson having had prior experience in writing such scary openings with Scream and Scream 2), and the excitement continues unabated until the spectacular finale which features one hell of a cool monster, a Cthulu style alien with lots of gnarly teeth and thrashing tentacles.
Probably the best cast of any sci-fi horror that comes to mind.Its entertaining but not that scary.This movie is about a group of students that attend high school.
Taken over by alien parasites, this time it's high school teachers who can't be trusted anymore with a small group of students – amongst them soon-to-be famous faces of Josh Hartnett and Elijah Wood – discovering the terrifying truth.
Now some say this film is for Teenagers who don't know any better than to think this is a great sci-fi film, but the biggest fan of this film that I know is my 63 year old mother, and I am surely not a teenager anymore.This film is a classic, and yes, it does feature teenagers as the main cast (not the actors.) But the adult characters make a great performance, and even Jon Stewart is pretty entertaining as the science teacher.One film that you should stay for the cast credits just for Jon's appearance!.
Finally after the appalling "I Know what you did Last Summer" franchise, writer Kevin Williamson comes back strong with this enjoyable slice of movie literate, sci-fi black comedy.Cult director Robert Rodriguez skilfully mixes shocks with laughs in this pseudo-remake of "Body Snatcher" movies.
The script has some wit, the cast is great, and the story moves; though, it doesn't really achieve the above ordinary status obviously intended -- it's no "Scream".Of the adults, coach Robert Patrick is the main villain; he and the other adults play their roles with a good amount of creepy teacher edginess.
Josh Hartnett (Black Hawk Down) plays the druggie/secret genius who has a major affection for nerdy teacher (Famke Janssen); Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings) is the geek who gets his groin crunched by the flagpole who thinks that his alien paranoia has come to life; Clea Duvall (no relation to Robert Duvall) is a student who has people questioning if she's a lesbian; Laura Harris is the new student taking interest in Josh Hartnett; Shawn Hatosy is a jock who wants to concentrate on academics while Jordana Brewster (The Fast and the Furious) is the "It" girl.
The film is directed by Robert Rodriguez while the screenplay is written by Kevin Williamson in which like Scream has big references to everything.Overall, a cool flick..
Its references range from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (the film's primary inspiration), to "Pod People." But this is no surprise -- the film was penned by Kevin Williamson, the guy behind the self-aware horror hit "Scream" One and Two, as well as "I Know What You Did Last Summer." (One of my least favorite horror films of all time, surprisingly.)This is one of his best efforts.
We have The Nerd (Elijah Wood), The Criminal (Josh Hartnett), The Jock (Shawn Hatosy), The Princess (Jordanna Brewster), The New Hot Babe (Laura Harris), and The Basketcase (Clea DuVall).As I sit at my keyboard and recall the plot and characters, I realize just how routine and clichéd the film really is.
The Faculty hardly breaks new ground thematically--from Invasion to the Body Snatchers to Night of the Demons, you've seen it all before--but it's reasonably talented young cast and well written screenplay lift this one head and shoulders above Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, or any of the Friday the 13th movies..
After the discovery of a strange creature, the students at a small- town high school start to suspect it has something to do with their teachers' sudden strange behavior and soon realize it's part of an alien plot to take over the world and must find a way to stop it.This here was quite an enjoyable and entertaining effort.
The biggest problem with the film is the fact that the beginning here takes awhile to get going as all the great work done to build up the threat of the aliens around the school doesn't feature any action to do that.
If this were a term paper and I were part of the Faculty marking it: A+ Nothing short of brilliant and still an enjoyable romp to this day, bringing an old premise into new territory (a talent of screenwriter Kevin Williamson, whom in my opinion is wasting the amount of awesome movies he could be writing on television shows I have no interest in).Robert Rodrigues' best work (to me), and I've never seen him rise above this gem in anything else he has done.The score by Marco Beltrami, the various artist's soundtrack, the actors and actresses, the colouring of the film, the dialogue, the characters, the twists, the turns...everything is like lightning in a bottle.Watched this in High School and it will go down as one of my all time favourites..
Directed by Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi), it's The Breakfast Club meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as six disparate students from Herrington High School band together when they discover that an alien life form is invading both the student and faculty bodies, with plans to take over the world.
Each of the heroes represents a different high school type: popular babe (Jordana Brewster), picked-on geek (Elijah Wood), goth girl (Clea DuVall), sensitive jock (Shawn Hatosy), new kid in town (Laura Harris), and bad-boy rebel (Josh Hartnett).
The young cast doesn't have a weak link among them (with special kudos to Wood, DuVall and heartthrob-in-the-making Hartnett), and Rodriguez gets maximum mileage from the titular faculty, which includes Jon Stewart, Piper Laurie, Salma Hayek, Bebe Neuwirth, and Robert Patrick of Terminator 2.
From the get-go one can figure the Robert Rodriguez directed film of Kevin (Scream) Williamson's The Faculty is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers given a dose of full-blown 90s High School horror movie without it being too compromised.
What struck me more though than the characters- even through some notable turns from its main teen cast (Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Clea Duvall, Shawn Hatosy and Jordanna Brewster) and choice teacher bit parts (Jon Stewart, Salma Hayek, Christopher McDonald)- is Rodriguez's fun with the material.
It differs from those earlier works in that:  (1) there are a half dozen high-school-age protagonists, and (2) the aliens initially co-opt the bodies of teachers.The personalities of the teenagers are well-developed, particularly the Elijah Wood and Clea DuVall characters.
Robert Rodriguez's direction is woefully uninspired and Kevin Williamson's script is his worst yet.It appears that with the release of this film, coupled with the recent and terribly executed remake of Psycho, John Carpenter's Vampires, and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer - that the fairly recent and much talked about "re-birth" of the horror genre has come to an abrupt (and welcome) end.
A bunch of kids - Elijah Wood, Josh Harnett, Clea DuVall and Jordana Brewster - of various levels of social standing within the social hierarchy (whether they accept it or not) begin to suspect that something is seriously amiss with their teachers and fellow students; whether the general mellowing of personalities is necessarily a bad thing in the jungle of High School politics is open to debate!There's a checklist of classic sci-fi films and 1990s cultural references.
Set in the fictional town of Herrington, Ohio, the film introduces high school students Casey (played by Elijah Wood), a photographer of the school's yearbook who is constantly a target of meat-headed bullies, Delilah (played by Jordana Brewster), the vindictive editor-in-chief of the yearbook, Stan (played by Shawn Hatosy), Delilah's boyfriend and star quarterback who's quitting the football team run by his tough-as-nails coach Joe Willis (played by Robert Patrick) to focuses on his academics, Stokely (played by Clea Duvall), a goth girl who is rumored to be a lesbian, Zeke (played by Josh Hartnett), a rebellious punk who is repeating his senior year while selling drugs and IDs to his fellow classmates, and Marybeth (played by Laura Harris), a new student.
As for the cast, everyone is mostly solid, nothing really memorable -- unless considering the creep demeanor of Robert Patrick displaying a sinister portrayal of a football coach who always feels like he is on another planet.The Faculty is fun, campy science-fiction horror bound to please teens and adults thirsty for a gory alien invasion scarefest not meant to taken seriously.
The movie revolves around a group of students, one of whom discovers the remnants of an extra biological entity that comes to life upon being placed in a fish tank, coming to the realization that aliens had gained control of their high school teachers and their attempts to uncover the queen alien in a concerted effort to search for an effective method to annihilate the queen so as to vanquish all alien parasites inhabiting their human hosts and to restore life back to normalcy; and introduces two attractive actresses, one assuming the role of heroine (namely, Jordana Brewster) - who will take you breath away, and the other the role of villain/alien (namely, Laura Harris) - who will knock the breath out of you.The best thing about the film is its cast.
They each fit a common stereotype: The Loser (Elijah Wood), The Outcast (Clea DuVall), The Stoner (Josh Hartnett), The Jock (Shawn Hatosy), The Cheerleader (Jordana Brewster), etc.As could be expected with a Robert Rodriguez venture, there was clearly some fun had with the casting choices.
All of those elements make The Faculty solid entertainment that's Robert Rodriguez at his best.Set in Ohio,The Faculty tells the story of High School teenagers Casey(Eiljah Wood),Zeke(Josh Hartnett),Delilah(Jordana Brewster),Stokely(Clea DuVall),Stan(Shawn Hatosy)and Marybeth(Laura Harris)who find out that their teachers and fellow students have been taken over and possessed by Aliens.
The Faculty is a terrific and memorable SCI-FI-Horror-Thriller that would be described as The Breakfast Club meets Invasion Of The Body Snatchers with a dash of John Carpenter's The Thing and is a movie that gives viewers a fun and interesting take on the Alien invasion genre with High School and with teenagers dealing with adults even though the movie isn't serious.
This is what happens when a random cluster of students at an ordinary high school discover that their teachers aren't what they appear to be.Directing this movie is Robert Rodriguez who has a story in the genre of horror for the second time - before that was From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).
The plot is hardly original, being that old science fiction/horror standby about alien parasites trying to take over the world by controlling people's minds and bodies, in this case starting with the pupils and staff (sorry, "faculty") of Herrington High School.
The Movie starts out OK and has a Creepy (yes that Invasion of the Body Snatchers/Puppet Master Thing is still unsettling to this Day) Set-up, but by the Time the Invaders turn into CGI Octopi all Tension gives way to Ho-Humness.The Film has a good Cast of Adults and Teens Spouting the usual Stuff that these B-Movie Adults and Teens Spout with all the Comfortable Clichés, but in the End with a very Forced and Facile Script, the Movie just sort of Lies there Gawking with Self-Referential Sadness.Slightly better than Average as these Things go, but considering the Talent Involved it can't help but be a Fizzle that Never seems to be Amped Up on its Own Stimulants..
The Faculty The most awkward aspect of attending high school as an alien is showering with your mono-penised classmates after gym.Fortunately, only the administrators in this horror movie appear to be aliens.When Casey (Elijah Wood) uncovers a strange creature at school, he takes it to his science teacher, Mr. Furlong (Jon Stewart).Eventually, like other faculty members (Famke Janssen, Salma Hayek, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick), Furlong hosts a species dependant on Earth's water.To prevent a town-wide assimilation, Casey and his classmates (Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Shawn Hatosy, Usher) must use a homemade narcotic to overthrow their alien oppressors, and return their teachers to normal.An archetypal teen horror movie from the late-1990s, the only thing separating The Faculty from the era's other slasher schlock is its done to death secret invasion premise.On the bright side, with their numerous appendages, alien educators are well equipped for today's overcrowded classrooms.Yellow Light vidiotreviews.blogspot.com.
It seems there is an alien plot to take over world and only a rag-tag group of students can save us.When you pair Robert Rodriguez {director} and Kevin Williamson {writer} what sort of movie do you really think you are going to get?
Well in this film is a take-off of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers in a small town high school with a first rate cast like Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, and even Jon Stewart is probably doing his finest acting moments as a professor/scientist.
It's a fun film with a mix of action, sci-fi, and some horror thtown in for good measure.I liked the actors in this too Clea Duvall was wonderful as the goth girl Stokely and Elijah Wood as the nerd of the group, but neither overdo their part, nor do they unplay it.
Casey is the nerd that nobody likes, there's a new girl from somewhere, a school news reporter, and a lesbian (!) or is she?They all suspect that their teachers are aliens, and one day when 2 of the students go into the faculty, they are shocked to see what happens.I highly recommend, that you go hire this movie NOW!!!!!!!9/10Typical teen horror movie!
FACULTY, THE (1998) *** (D: Robert Rodriguez) Surprisingly effective update of the BODY SNATCHERS theme, set in a high school where alien parasites take control over teachers and other authority figures.