The Faculty Review
by pm agapow (pm AT postviews DOT freeuk DOT com)July 23rd, 1999
Review: "The Faculty" (1998)
A Postview, copyright p-m agapow 1999
A group of misfit high school students grow suspicious of their teachers. Have they been replaced by sinister alien doubles? What are their plans for Earth? Have aliens infiltrated the rebels? Is this just a crap SF film?
Kevin Williamson is chiefly (in fact only) for his self referential and ironic horror films "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer". Neither were exactly post-modern classics. A bad horror film where the characters know that they are in a bad horror film is - in-jokes, knowing winks to the audience, homage to genre aside - still a bad horror film. His screenplay for "The Faculty" does nothing to change this track record.
Although endless comparisons have been made to the cult SF flick "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "The Faculty" bears a greater resemblance to a more recent film, John Carpenter's "The Thing". (Actually two scenes are stolen outright: a walking autonomous head, and a "loyalty test" to ascertain who can be trusted.) The strange behaviour of their teachers leads a diverse group of students to conclude their school has been taken over. But their own ranks have been infiltrated and as their numbers drop, suspicion blossoms within the group. In the hands of Carpenter, this created a claustrophobic atmosphere, with a team that needed to trust each other being unable to. "The Faculty" is by contrast a sloppily constructed film. Starting with a group of uniquely unlikable characters (the bitchy cheerleader, the drug dealer, the professional victim nerd, the dumb jock), they are brought together implausibly and just as implausibly start to fight. The only reason for the timing of their squabble seems to be that this was around when it happens in other films of this type. It may be interesting to see who gets taken over next, but the director doesn't play fair here. Several party members turn when there has been no opportunity for them to have been converted. In a flashback late in the film we are reshown a previous scene, including something that clearly didn't happen in it. Rather than redirect our attention or be clever with our sympathies the film just lies to get out of plot cul-de-sacs.
The acting is passable, with creditable performances by Famke Janssen, Bebe Neuwirth and Piper Laurie in small roles. . Salma Hayek however shows herself to be a talent-free zone by failing to carry a three-minute appearance as a school nurse. Clea DuVall does a nice turn as as a gloomy outsider, shining against the rest of the glossy teenage leads. I'd like to say something positive about director Robert Rodriguez, who looked so promising when he made the shoestring budget "El Mariachi". However any number of dull Hollywood hacks could have made "The Faculty", with its off-the-shelf direction. Regrettably, another talent bites the dust.
So the central characters are the geek, the jock, the prom queen ... no, hang about, that was "The Breakfast Club". One thing about Kevin Williamson scripts is that they're like so many other films you've seen before. Like one of those composite photos made by averaging hundreds of faces, there's something elusively familiar about it all. (Or, to pick a genre example, the shimmer suits from Philip K Dick's "A Scanner Darkly".) In fact, this cut-and-paste passes as narrative. When considering how to defeat the aliens, the characters decide apropos no evidence whatsoever that it must be the same way as in Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters". Of course they turn out to be right. When the heroes do so little to deserve victory, can you really be interested in the outcome?
In his book of essays "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", Mark Foster Wallace ponders why there is so much bad television and why people still watch so much. The reason, he decides, is that television is fundamentally ironic. On one hand it parades its importance ("don't miss", "don't go away", "hear it first") while on the other hand giving a sly wink. You and I know, it says, this is all a joke. What's the harm? So programs can simultaneously portray themselves as vital and garbage, as original and derivative, as unmissable and disposable. Wallace may not have Williamson's number, but he is in the right area code. "The Faculty" tries to be tense by being predictable, to tell a scary story by copying other scary stories, to cover up plot holes by hiding in genre. It's not a poorly made film - it's just not even trying to be a good film.
And this isn't going to do. How long has it been since the last really scary film you saw. (For me it was the launch sequence in "Contact".) Why has SF, in fact big box office film, become action-comedy SFX by default? Does anyone make serious and sincere films anymore? It's very easy to produce ironic, self-referential work, escaping any responsibility for being derivative or illogical with a plea that it's a parody. It's a lot harder to actually produce something new and be prepared to face criticism head-on.
"The Faculty" isn't a terrible film, but it's a terribly lazy one and a bad sign for the future. [*/misfire] and "Death to the archdemon
Williamson!" on the Sid and Nancy scale.
"The Faculty"
Released 1998.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez.
Screenplay by Kevin Williamson.
Starring Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Elijah Wood.
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Paul-Michael Agapow ([email protected]), Biology, Imperial College "We were too young, we lived too fast and had too much technology ..."
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