The Faculty

The Faculty
Directed by	Robert Rodriguez
Produced by	Elizabeth Avellan
Written by	Story: David Wechter Bruce Kimmel Screenplay: Kevin Williamson
Starring	Elijah Wood Jordana Brewster Clea DuVall Laura Harris Josh Hartnett Shawn Hatosy Salma Hayek Famke Janssen Piper Laurie Bebe Neuwirth Robert Patrick Daniel von Bargen Usher Raymond Jon Stewart
Music by	Marco Beltrami
Cinematography	Enrique Chediak
Editing by	Robert Rodríguez
Distributed by	Dimension
Release date(s)	December 25, 1998
Running time	104 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$15,000,000 (estimated)

The Faculty is a 1998 horror/science-fiction film, written by Kevin Williamson, writer of Scream and its sequel, and directed by Robert Rodriguez, director of Desperado and From Dusk till Dawn. The film stars Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth, Piper Laurie, Famke Janssen, Usher Raymond, Salma Hayek, and Jon Stewart.

Plot

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At Herrington High School, faculty and staff are being taken over by alien parasites. A rag-tag group of six students form a resistance cell. There is Zeke Tyler (Josh Hartnett), a loner repeating his senior year because he didn't care about graduating, whose parents travel constantly so as to 'get away from their big bastard mistake,' and who sells, among other illegal items, a cocaine-like drug of his own creation to his fellow students; Stan Rosado (Shawn Hatosy), a jock who decides during his Senior year to quit the football team and focus on his academics; Stan's girlfriend Delilah Profit (Jordana Brewster), a popular, yet vindictive girl who is the editor in chief of the student paper; Casey Connor (Elijah Wood), an outcast picked on by the students at Northern Schools, who is intelligent and a photographer for the school newspaper, and also has a crush on Delilah; Stokely 'Stokes' Mitchell (Clea DuVall), a female outcast and literary buff who claims to be a lesbian in order to prove her independence from people, though she has a crush on Stan; and Marybeth Louise Hutchinson (Laura Harris), the new girl at school, who came from Atlanta to live with relatives because her parents died in a car crash. She befriends Stokes and has a crush on Zeke.

The aliens who take over the school do so by injecting a parasitic organism into the ear, which takes over the brain and creates what appears to be a different version of the person - one that desires to spread the parasite as much as it can. The faculty sends the entire student body to the nurse one by one for ear inspections, where they are taken over.

Casey figures this out and soon warns the other five. During a meeting, Mr. Furlong (Jon Stewart), the science teacher, enters the room and attempts to infect them with the alien. Zeke pulls out a pen filled with his drug, and jams it into Furlong's eye, which then dries out the alien inside of him, as the drug is a diuretic and the aliens require excessive amounts of water to cope with life on Earth. The group soon realizes older teacher would make a poor host due to lacking the necessary water for the alien to exist.

Thus, they all leave the school, which has become completely infected (the entire student body stares at them), and go to Zeke's house with a sample of the parasite. Stokely speculates that destroying the queen alien will kill all the parasites, without killing their victims. Soon, the group becomes suspicious of each other, each of them citing such actions as Stan's recent shift from football to academics and Casey's sudden courage as potential evidence that they aren't who they say they are. They each take turns snorting the drug to prove that they have not been infected. When Delilah's turn comes, she refuses, revealing that she has already been infected. She then destroys most of Zeke's supply of the drug, as well as his equipment for producing it, before escaping. The remaining five, with what is left of the drug, go to the school, where the entire town is watching the school football game. They succeed in killing Principal Drake (Bebe Neuwirth), but the other hosts remain unaffected. Stan subsequently becomes infected when he goes onto the field to investigate. Because they ran out of their supply of the drug, Zeke and Casey decide to go to Zeke's car for more. Marybeth and Stokely wait inside the school gym for their return. While Casey serves as a decoy, Zeke goes to his car. There, he encounters Miss Burke (Famke Janssen). He seemingly kills her, but she survies.

Marybeth reveals herself to be the queen alien; she had escaped snorting the drug by biological trickery. She chases Stokely and Case. Zeke returns with more of the drug. Stokely is infected and Zeke is knocked out in the locker room. Casey runs back to the gym area and tricks the alien into following him being the now-closing bleachers. The machinery traps what used to be Marybeth and Casey jams the last of the drugs into her face, she soon dies.

After this, the group shows big changes: Zeke applies his genius to schoolwork and joins the football team (and seems to be dating Miss Burke); Stan and Stokely become boyfriend and girlfriend; Stokely changes her appearance and is happy now; Delilah and Casey become boyfriend and girlfriend; Casey is more accepted at school (with various papers talking about his extraterrestrial encounter, despite the official denial of the FBI), and Delilah is no longer vindictive. In the background of the final scene, students are seen bullying another student in the same way they picked on Casey.

Cast

• Elijah Wood as Casey Connor
• Jordana Brewster as Delilah Profitt
• Josh Hartnett as Zeke Tyler
• Clea DuVall as Stokely 'Stokes' Mitchell
• Laura Harris as Marybeth Louise Hutchinson
• Shawn Hatosy as Stan Rosado
• Salma Hayek as Nurse Rosa Harper
• Famke Janssen as Miss Elizabeth Burke
• Piper Laurie as Mrs. Karen Olson
• Bebe Neuwirth as Principal Valerie Drake
• Jon Stewart as Professor Furlong
• Robert Patrick as Coach Joe Willis
• Christopher McDonald as Mr. John Connor
• Usher Raymond as Gabe Santora
• Daniel von Bargen as Mr. John Tate

Reception

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes tallied thirty-six reviews from critics (with nineteen listed as positive and seventeen listed as negative) to give 'The Faculty' a 53% Fresh Score^[1]. Metacritic gave 'The Faculty' a score of 61.^[2]

The Faculty was viewed on 2,365 screens its opening weekend in the US, making $11,633,495.^[3] Its eventual domestic gross was $40,283,321.^[4]

Soundtrack

The Faculty: Music from the Dimension Motion Picture
Soundtrack by various artists
Released	December 8, 1998
Genre	Industrial Britpop Alternative metal Alternative rock
Label	Sony
Professional reviews
Allmusic link
Robert Rodriguez film soundtrack chronology
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) The Faculty (1998) Spy Kids (2001)

The score is composed by Marco Beltrami, who had previously scored the teen-slasher-horror film, Scream, as well as Mimic. Both Beltrami's score^[5] and songs by various artists used in the film were released as albums. The "music from the motion picture" album features songs by various indie and alternative rock groups.

Track listing

1. "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" - Class of '99
2. "The Kids Aren't Alright" - The Offspring
3. "I'm Eighteen" - Creed
4. "Helpless" - D Generation
5. "School's Out" - Soul Asylum
6. "Medication" - Garbage
7. "Haunting Me" - Stabbing Westward
8. "Maybe Someday" - Flick
9. "Resuscitation" - Sheryl Crow
10. "It's Over Now" - Neve
11. "Changes" - Shawn Mullins
12. "Stay Young" - Oasis
13. "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)" - Class of '99

Filming locations

The Faculty takes place in fictional Herrington, Ohio but was filmed in Austin, Dallas, and Lockhart, Texas.

DVD release

The Faculty was one of the few Robert Rodriguez films not to receive special treatment on DVD. Missing are traditional extras typical for a Robert Rodriguez DVD including "10 Minute Film School", audio commentary and making-of featurettes.

Several scenes involving an additional character named Venus, played by Kidada Jones, were shown in previews but cut from the film.^{[citation needed]}

The film's poster features Usher (who plays Gabe, a minor character), but not Shawn Hatosy (who plays Stan, one of the leads).

References

External links

• The Faculty at the Internet Movie Database
• The Faculty at Allmovie