Review of The Faculty (1998) by Halfwelshman — 05 Apr 2012

The Faculty delivers exactly what you expect from a highschool-comedy-horror. It has all the usual character archetypes played by soon-to-be megastars: the oppressed nerd (Elijah Wood), the whip-smart rebel (Josh Hartnett), the goth outcast (Clea DuVall), the misunderstood jock (Shawn Hatosy), miss perfect super-b*tch (Jordana Brewster) and the new girl (Laura Harris).

Kevin Williamson's writing is sharp, funny and self-aware as always, and knowingly refers to the numerous earlier films The Faculty pays homage to. The film is consistently fun, with the best scene being the students driven to playing a rather unconventional version of Russian roulette through intense paranoia of possession by the film's parasitic invaders.

The final act of the film does disappoint a little - its big, loud and unnecessary, and showcases the film's unfortunate lack of a decent budget. Though it doesn't have any glaring weaknesses other than this segment, The Faculty does still feel like it's lacking something.

Perhaps its the fact that it would be fairly unremarkable teen schlock were it not for Williamson's contribution, or maybe its that Robert Rodriguez is allowed very little opportunity to inject his zany creative style into the film, and consequently it feels like it was helmed by any old mercenary director-for-hire.

Even so, The Faculty is pretty consistently entertaining, with good performances across the board, a pleasing amount of laughs and horror and sci-fi movie references aplenty for the buffs in the audience.