The Faculty

Un délire plutôt sympa. (13/04/2007)

A very pleasant balance between great science fiction and a trashy mess. Perfect actors, led by Hartnett and Wood mixed in with beauties like Famke Janssen, Jordana Brewster and Salma Hayek, can work wonders. It's kind of a shame that no one else tries to film similar serious-looking nonsense (or rather they try to do, but always overdo it somewhere) it’s sorely lacking. (It's up to you Robert. :-) P.S.: A gym teacher has never been so scary. (24/08/2008)

The Faculty loves a lot of other films, and if you love them too, then you'll love The Faculty. Robert Rodriguez manages to combine humor with suspense, the script is full of interestingly written characters that follow the classic "nerd, jock, rebel, weird girl, pretty girl" template, but they always break them in some way - so the "nerd" isn't so desperate that he can't hit on a girl, the "jock" is sick of playing sports and wants to be a nerd, the "rebel" is more intelligent than most teachers... And so on. It's a wonder that something so fresh and casually entertaining was made by the creator of the awkward Machete and Spy Kids. (23/03/2014)

A demonstration of the postmodern emptiness of the once-productive category of "stolen bodies". The Faculty can only deal with sweaty and inconsistent quotes (in Invasion of the Body Snatchers it was not about a foreign invasion, but an irreversible identity theft), harmless conspiracies that completely eliminate the existential restlessness of the original version and the denouement that reduces the alien invasion, in a blunt sense, to the possibility of being born more perfect and achieving satisfaction (all the characters end up being steamed to their liking). The ideological goulash, in which the motif of a stolen body turns into a utilitarian and effective trick in an otherwise classic "high-school" plot about the need to mark your territory in a collective, makes it feel all the more shallow in that it refers to real classics that have managed to do more than just copy the archetypal human fear of a stranger in us. Plus, the movie is boring and affective in all its adolescent dullness. (25/04/2011)

I remembered the film working for me the first time I saw it, and today's rewatch was no different. I love the horror genre, and I’m also not against films that combine horror with comedy if it’s done well. It would never occur to me to think of The Faculty as a horror film; it's not even a comedy. The filmmakers have taken just enough from both genres to make a viable mixture. What surprised me most was the fact that I didn't mind how unoriginal the writing was. In fact, the filmmakers openly acknowledge being inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers, making no secret of the fact that they almost copied scenes from the horror gem The Thing (1982), of which I am a die-hard fan. This is what surprised me the most. While it would have driven me up the wall in any other film, not only was I not bothered by that here, I was actually amused. Probably because I could tell that the filmmakers didn't take themselves too seriously and just wanted to entertain the viewer without taking credit for other people’s work. The whole thing struck me as undemanding entertainment, with a bit of tension and a few gritty scenes. It’s a relaxing watch that won’t bring anybody down. At least that’s how I feel about it. / Lesson learned: When watching this film, try not to think about the issue of drugs and school massacres for a while. (29/09/2022)