The Faculty
The Faculty
If you want to go straight to the review, just ignore the yellow text.
Before I write the review for The Faculty, I have to admit that it will probably be I little biased in the films favor. "Why?", you ask. Well, because I am and hopefully will be for some time to come, be a big Robert Rodriguez fan. Again I hear you ask "Why?". I suppose its because his film career has been that of a fairy tale. He was not academically smart or wealthy enough for film school, but later managed to get in through scholarship. He had been making films all through his teenage years using his huge family as actors and crew. Now during his time in school he made a 10 minute film on 16mm named "Bedhead". The story a of a 10 year old girl seeking revenge on her older brother using telekinetic powers. Again Rodriguez cast his family in the film. Bedhead did the film circuit and won numerous awards. Rodriguez got his first ounce of attention.
After film school Rodriguez was jobless. So he decided to make his mark on the Mexican action film scene, which is still awfully tacky. Rodriguez figured that he could make a pretty decent Mexican film for $7000, but the problem was that he was broke. So he borrowed $4000 from a friend and sold his body to science for the other 3. Now, with the $7000, a script he wrote while he was a guinea pig and some holes where there no holes before he headed to New Mexico.
He shot El Mariachi in two weeks and cut it together in another two. And what he ended up with has fast paced low budget action film that was 10 times better than the Mexican shit and more entertaining to watch than Mercury Rising.
And the rest is history. Well maybe not history just yet. He still has only Desperado, a section of Four Rooms, form Dusk till Dawn and now Th Faculty under his belt.
And what of The Faculty? Is this the plug that will sink the boat of the new hot shot or will it send him soaring to the skies, placing him next to Spielberg, Scorsece and Lucas. Well neither. And here is why
The Faculty is a premise which we have seen a hundred times before. A squid like parasite comes down to earth to take over the planet by infecting the human race and sucking the life out of their hosts ( as you would do). Now, everything is going according to plan for the ugly ones, except for the pesky kids. And of course, they are the only ones who spot that the teaching staff are acting a bit inhuman-like. Of course, the whole town has been "Body Snatched" before they can get help. So the task of elenimating the deadly alien species is left up to the teenage stereotypes - we have the Stephen King geek boy Casey (Eijah Wood), the pissed off misfit Stokey (Duvall),the genius drug dealer Zeke ( Josh Hartnett),the prom queen cheerleader Delilah (Jordana Brewster), the doubting jock Stan (Shawn Hatosy) and the new kid in school southerner Mary Beth (Laura Harris).
With the combination of Rodriguezs' energy behind the camera and a script by Kevin Williamson (Scream) who both love blood, guts, fast paced action and dialogue, we are almost guaranteed a fun packed horror film perfect for Saturday night viewing.
As we all know the teen-horror film genre received a new lease of life with the fun and original Scream. And predictably enough, a legion of "tag along" films followed I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, Urban Legend, the list goes on, all very average and all very predictable.
But this film is different. Yes, it is predictable, there are lots of shock horror jumps but this film has that extra edge over most and it is the first half of the film that gives it the edge. Simply because Rodriguez seems so comfortable with the school environment. By this I mean he paints a picture of a teenagers life so realistically.
An example of this can be seen in the first few minutes. Rodriguez is introducing us to the main characters through a nicely edited scene in front of the school. We start with Casey, then on to Delilah, then Zeke, and as the camera is panning between characters we see in the corner poor Casey being used as a battering ram, legs open, on a flag pole, by a bunch of thick skulled, dumb ass jocks. Now, this struck a cord with me because I thought that that sort of thing only happened in the school I went to, back then we called it "Poling" or to be grammatically correct one could be "Poled". Yes, he gives us stereotypical characters in the sense that they are cheerleaders, jocks, nerds and outcasts. But he gives each main character an extra dimension, we can almost see these people in ten years time with real lives.
Kevin Williamson does in The Faculty just what he did in Scream, but not as much. He throws in as much irony as possible, without rocking the boat too much. The most obvious films he borrowed from were the "Body Snatcher" films, particularly The Thing. Remember the head with legs, well, there are one of those here too, only not as cool., and the blood test scene is nicely redone, this time with homemade drugs.
But where the film falls is in the second half. Here it goes back down to the same level as the average films I mentioned earlier. It just gets to stage where everybody has being taken over and all that is left is the formality of running and screaming.
So Rodriguez once again as come up with a entertaining film. But his next two films will really test my faith in him. Is he just a ten year flash in the pan? Will he be able to tackle serious subject matter? Will he make it with the big ones. There is only one thing that I am sure of and that is, he will always be fun..
