The Faculty

Robert Rodriguez, USA 1998, 104 mins

While directed by Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado), The Faculty is very much a Kevin Williamson picture. No gun fetishism here, instead it's a 90s self-conscious, self-referential, teen angst, high school flick. This time however, the alienation is not simply in the minds of the less popular students of Herrington High. What every onscreen nerd suspects, that jocks and cheerleaders are from another planet, becomes all too real for this group of Breakfast Club updates when the faculty begin to take a turn for the sinister. It is then left to the usual unlikely bunch to save school and planet from getting turned into pod people.

In the same manner as previous Williamson movies (Scream & Scream II, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Halloween H20), he takes an existing horror sub-genre and grafts it into the world of Dawson's Creek (also a Williamson creation). In Scream his source was late 70s slasher movies like Halloween and Prom Night. Here we are treated to his take on The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing. In some scenes the similarity to his source material is striking. Anyone who has seen and loved John Carpenter’s version of The Thing (1982) will be pleased to see the tie-everybody-up-and-make-'em-take-the-test-to-see-who's-human routine lovingly recreated here.

As with the Scream films knowledge of the genre is rewarded. While not sporting the wagon load of references of its two predecessors there are enough to keep the movie buff happy. Look out also for Piper Laurie (Carrie's mother in Carrie), Rodriguez regular Salma Hayek (From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado) and particularly Robert Patrick (the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgement Day) as the school coach in by far and away his best role since T-2.

What separates this from Williamson's earlier films, particularly the dreadful I Know What You Did Last Summer, is that he is now revamping a far better class of movie. While this perhaps more clearly reveals Williamson's shortcomings as a writer, it also makes for a far more intelligent horror romp than we have become used to. If you liked Scream you won't be disappointed.

Review by Tom Shuttleworth
Taken from EUFS Programe Autumn 1999