The Breakfast Club Gets Attacked by Aliens
Nerdy Up North
The setup
A group of students at Herrington High discovers that members of the school faculty are being taken over by alien parasites. The teenagers are forced to work together while trying to figure out who is still human.
The Faculty feels like somebody mixed The Breakfast Club, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and every late-90s teen movie into the same bottle and shook it until Robert Rodriguez thought it looked fun enough to film.
The cast is stacked. Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Clea DuVall, Jordana Brewster and Shawn Hatosy are all playing recognisable high school types, but the film knows they are stereotypes and has fun messing with your expectations.
The teachers might be even better. Robert Patrick as the football coach already looks like he could kill everybody without needing to be an alien, and seeing actors like Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen and Jon Stewart getting dragged into the madness is part of the appeal.
The alien effects are very late 90s and some of the CGI has definitely aged, but the practical slime and body horror bits still work. Rodriguez keeps the film moving quickly enough that you rarely have time to care.
It is not particularly original, and the film openly references the stories it is borrowing from. That honesty actually helps. It is not pretending it invented alien possession. It just wants to do its own fun teen horror version.
The Faculty is exactly the kind of mid budget genre film I miss. Weird, messy, packed with recognisable actors and finished before it can outstay its welcome.
Positives
Great ensemble cast, fun body snatcher premise, Robert Patrick is perfectly intimidating and the film moves at a brilliant pace.
Negatives
Some CGI has aged badly and several characters deliberately start as stereotypes rather than fully rounded people.
Verdict
The Faculty is pure late-90s horror comfort food. It borrows from better films, knows it is borrowing from them and has a great time anyway.
