Movie Review: The Faculty (1998)

This movie is definitely more than a little derivative of a lot of other movies. Like so many other movies from the late ’90s or early ‘00s, it basically has the same poster as Scream, and some of the character interaction and the casting decisions reminded me a lot of that movie.

And the story is basically Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and of course the script makes note of that, with an awkward scene where a few characters discuss the possibility that people who create science fiction are actually aliens, trying to convince us it’s all fiction. It’s strange, and it’s pretty out of place.

This movie does have a very strong first half, though. I guess the first scene is a bit awkward, but following that, we get some brief glimpses of the secrets being held by the faculty of this suburban Ohio high school, and there’s some good suspense.

I really liked where this movie was going for a while, especially with its characters. There are arguably too many teens here, but they were all at least a little interesting, and there were some good performances. Josh Hartnett is perfect as this high school “cool guy” who’s actually a loser who has a crush on his English teacher and should have graduated a year ago.

Elijah Wood, who I think is the youngest in the cast, is pretty good as the kind of quiet, bullied, nerdy type.

And Jordana Brewster is fine as the bitchy mean girl cheerleader captain. She goes on to have more substance later on.

There are a few other teen characters that I really like, but they’re not played by actors I recognized, and I wanted to highlight the actors I recognize because it’s a very Scream thing to cast these up and coming future stars, as opposed to your Heather Langenkamps, who may have had the profile of being future stars, but for whatever reason, it didn’t work out. It makes this movie a bit nostalgic.

And the cast doesn’t end there. There are a lot of really random casting choices for members of the faculty. Like casting Piper Laurie of Carrie and Twin Peaks makes sense, as do Famke Janssen and Robert Patrick. But why is Salma Hayek in this? Or Jon Stewart? But the real kicker for me was Dr. Lilith Sternin-Crane, Bebe Neuwirth.

This movie really works as a nice little suspenseful teen horror movie, but as the plot progresses, it becomes a monster movie, and this is where the movie doesn’t work so much. It isn’t enough to kill the first half, but I liked the first half so much more.

Rating: 6/10