The Faculty

As we mentioned in "Our Mission Statement," Sarah and I (Jasmyn) have very different movie collections. Sarah hadn't seen this movie before. I have, several times over, because I first saw it when I was 12 and became obsessed with its ridiculousness. However, this is one of those movie moments where we reach a fork in the road.



Directed By: Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Sin City)
Starring: Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett and Clea DuVall, among others
Plot Summary: "Are they using crack to kill the aliens?!"

Sarah, not being a fan of horror movies, does not feel qualified to judge this particular flick. She said it was like A Walk To Remember and Twilight combined. It was already bad, but made worse by the big-name ensemble cast (seriously, Jon Stewart and Salma Hayek are here, too) that did not deliver. Also, Sarah does NOT like surprises, and while I'm used to the jolts of this movie, for Sarah it was, well... surprising. The ear-invading parasites, the eye-stabbing, and the fingers and decapitated head that crawled away after they got chopped off, for example, were major issues.

Observations Made As We Watched:
--Lots of shrieking on Sarah's part
--Hysterical laughter on my part
--"THIS IS SO DISGUSTING!"
--"This isn't going to turn out well for him, is it?"
--"NO NO NO, RUN RUN RUN!!!"

I know this movie's questionable. I'm the one who added it to our blogging queue and shoved it in front of Speed Racer because I felt nostalgic. Anyway, I think there are plenty of redeemable qualities in this movie. Casey (Elijah Wood), as an unlikely little hero fighting against insane odds (cough -- FRODO -- cough), handles the "let's recap so the audience is up to speed" exposition in the middle of the movie perfectly. Plus, he has a line that I remembered for a long time afterwards, during subsequent viewings of alien invasion movies:

"If you were going to take over the world, would you blow up the White House, Independence Day style... or would you sneak in through the back door?"

Robert Rodriguez will later be well-known for the outrageous violence he throws into his work (did anyone else see Johnny Depp's blind gunfight after getting his eyeballs drilled out in Once Upon a Time In Mexico?), but The Faculty was clearly one of his earliest movies. When the alien mother finally shows up, in the form of a fanged worm from animatronic hell, it's laughable. In fact, Sarah was no longer freaked by the creature at that point. The tiny ones crawling into people's faces were another story.

The Best Part: The method used to destroy the aliens is a homemade speed/cocaine combo created in Zeke's (Josh Hartnett's) basement. It is, as his character explains, a diuretic, so it dries out the water-based invaders almost instantly. In one scene, where the crew of teen misfits must prove to each other that they have not been taken over, what do they do? They snort the white powder, kept in Bic pen capsules. Casey proceeds to giggle and freak out on Zeke's sofa.

Stan: "What the hell is wrong with him?"
Zeke: "He's tweaking, man! LET HIM F***ING TWEAK!!!"

The Worst Part: The dialogue, while being half-decent for what it is (and legitimately funny in some parts) is very obviously part of the screenwriter's attempt to make the movie edgy. But I have to admit, one of my favorite worst lines in a movie is delivered near the end, as Casey prepares to finally stab the alien mother:

"Guaranteed to JACK YOU UP!"

Sarah gives The Faculty a C, and while she says she'd need to see it again so that she's not completely taken aback by all the crazy, she can't see it getting higher than that. I, however, give it a solid, campy B. I think it falls under the "cult classic" category, along with several other deliciously bad movies that are on our collective horizons.

(Poster and trailer © Dimension Films)