Random Movie: The Faculty (1998)

The mid-nineties were an interesting time to be a horror fan. Since the old franchise favorites of Freddy and Jason were long gone with Michael Myers soon following, they were replaced by direct-to-video nonsense and faux-horror such as Hideaway or The Island of Dr. Moreau. Then came along Kevin Williamson, a guy who could write a decent screenplay full of homages to past genre staples complete with clever dialogue. After exploding in Hollywood with Scream, Williamson took his talents and tweeked them over and over, resulting in films like The Faculty.

At its core, this should not be a good movie. It was stacked with current and future WB and pop culture stars, featured established actors for a bit of gravitas, and almost blatantly ripped off countless other alien invasion films from many decades before. Add to this formula a fairly well established director, an eclectic mix of music, and a corporate sponsorship with accompanying commercials, you've got yourself a blockbuster going! Now, it may seem that I dislike this movie, but be aware: I do not.

The plot is just simple enough not to lose any of the ADHD-afflicted members of the audience with an alien being attempting to take control of a small Midwestern town beginning with the local high school. Our ragtag team of unlikely friends band together to try to stop the impending invasion and wrestle control back from the extraterrestrial hell-bent on taking over Earth. Consider it The Breakfast Club meets Alien with a random dash of other horror and sci-fi conventions and you have the basic premise.

Now, I won't kid you, or myself for that matter, and say that this is a masterpiece. At best it is an homage to Robert Heinlein and other sci-fi writers and at worst it is but a mere brick in the wing that the late nineties built Williamson. That said, as I recently watched this movie I enjoyed it as much as when it debuted during my tenure in high school.

For the most part, it is a fairly well-polished film with Dimension throwing good talent into the project. The acting is decent with most of the leads landing steady work in the next decade (Elijah Wood arguably being the most successful). The direction and editing by Robert Rodriguez is fairly well done with a sense of tension and even some decent jumps thrown in the mix as the invaders take over the school. And even though it feels like a half-assed remix of his previous work, Marco Beltrami's score gels with the frenetic pace of the film. If anything is amiss, it's Williamson's trademark rapid-fire, self-aware dialogue that begins to feel a little stale after his four thousand previous similar endeavors in the same vein.

In the end though, The Faculty is a fairly mediocre film: passable but nothing to write home about. If I had watched it for the first time today, I would likely be disappointed by the talent in front and behind the screen. But, having fond memories of sneaking into the theater on Christmas day and listening to the soundtrack while cruising in my Mazda 323, The Faculty will always hold my attention, in spite of my old age trying to prevent it.