‘The Faculty’ revisited … 10 years later

Every once in a while a movie is made that not only stands the test of time, but also carries the proud distinction of being a film that starts a genre revolution. Like many films, The Faculty takes some time for its effect on the genre to sink in. So, I wanted to watch the movie again [not sure how many times this will be] and look back on what it has become. The Faculty (1998) was directed by fan-favorite Robert Rodriguez and is, on the surface, just another teen slasher flick. However, we don’t have to dig very deep to see that this movie is much more than just a teen scream-fest. One of the first things I noticed upon watching The Faculty ten years later, is that it was clearly written to be a sort of Breakfast Club for the 90’s. Where John Hughes gave us the Brat Pack of the eighties, Rodriguez has given us a new generation of young stars who were relatively unknowns prior to this movie.

The most significant of these young stars was Elijah Wood, who played the shy photography geek. While Wood had a handful of smaller roles in some known titles, The Faculty really was the movie that put Wood on the map. Wood would only appear in three relatively small roles between The Faculty and landing the part of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings in 2001. The young actor that probably benefitted the most from The Faculty was Josh Hartnett, who played Zeke, the school outcast and drug-dealer. Hartnett only had one role in a recognizable film before this movie, appearing in Halloween: H20 the same year The Faculty came out. Jordana Brewster (The Fast and the Furious), who played the cheer-leading captain Delilah, certainly owes Rodriguez for her budding career, Clea DuVall (Girl, Interrupted, The Grudge) who played the dressed-in-black loner girl Stokely also received her big break in The Faculty. Even Shawn Hatosy (Alpha Dog) who played the quarterback Stan, would go from a role in the mind-numbingly boring The Postman to a much brighter career after appearing in The Faculty. And really, Jon Stewart hadn’t done  much before playing Professor Furlong.

Enough of the name-dropping. What really matters here is what The Faculty did for the genre of horror movies in the late 90’s.   In 1998, there weren’t a lot of good teen horror movies like this, outside of Scream (1996),  but that all changed very quickly.  In 1998 we got Urban Legends (not good);  in 1999, we got Idle Hands, Teaching Mrs. Tingle  and Cruel Intentions; in 2000 we got  the first of the Final Destination movies; and … fine, we did have I Know What You Did Last Summer (blah!) in 1997 and The Craft in 1996, but the numbers still fall in favor of The Faculty having the most influence. After 2000, we began seeing all kinds of new teen horror movies, for better or worse, but they all have that new “stylistically hip dark mood” about them that we get from The Faculty.

I’ve talked a lot about what The Faculty has done for the future, but there’s another element of this film that I must admire Rodriguez for including … the homage. Oh, but not just one. The first, and most obvious, is that The Faculty is clearly a modern retelling of the much-told The Body Snatchers. Not only does the plot primarily pull from this classic sci-fi/horror story  by Jack Finney, but there are several references made by Stokely and others regarding the various sci-fi books, stories and movies attached to this concept of aliens invading our society by replacing us with look-alikes. One smaller and less obvious homage is Rodriguez’s ode to John Carpenter’s The Thing. If you don’t remember this, I strongly urge you to watch the film again and pay extra attention to the following scene: The group of students who comprise the main cast are huddled within the science lab after running from the alien  faculty. The students are frightened and paranoid of everyone, trust is no longer possible without proof. At this point, Zeke had already discovered his recreational drug concoction has a deadly effect on  the aliens. Zeke begins handing out Bic pens filled with this drug for each of them to take as proof they were not aliens. In The Thing, this scene was originally done by applying extreme heat to a sample of each person’s blood. If it were infected with the alien being, it would violently convulse. I remember seeing this scene for  the first time and thinking how cool it was for Rodriguez  to honor one of the greatest horror movies ever made.