Coming out in the late 1990s from director Robert Rodriguez, The Faculty is a film with the likes of Elijah Wood before he was Mr Frodo in Lord of the Rings, Jordana Brewster before she was in Fast and Furious and Josh Hartnett before he was in…the various Josh Hartnett films.
It doesn’t end there though. It has Famke Janssen before she was in X-Men, Robert Patrick after he was the T-1000 and Usher…yes that Usher. Jon Stewart, Salam Hayek also star and it’s crazy that this film doesn’t retroactively get more attention based on its cast alone.
The story is a great take on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers formula, with the young cast of teenagers battling against the school faculty who have been taken over by alien substitutes.
I prefer this film to the likes of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, but this film gets far less attention.
Elijah Woods plays Casey, who is the geek who figures out that there is an alien invasion taking place and he has to enlist his Breakfast Club collection of oddball and misfits to try to save the world. It’s got the vibe of Scooby Doo, but as a teen thriller, and I mean that as a good thing.
I love the pacing of the film and how it creates a paranoia that anyone could be turned and transformed into an alien. The film differs from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Thing in that the aliens don’t actually replace their victims, but instead infect them with parasites which means it’s possible to restore victims back to normal humans.
This isn’t really explored during the course of the film, but is evident by the end. This is a film which would be great for a sequel, or remake, and especially I can see this turned into a great event series of 10 to 20 episodes.
If you’ve not seen it yet, but like sci-fi and mild horror this is well worth checking out. It makes great use of all ya ensemble cast and restricted setting.
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