The Faculty

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Template:Infobox Film The Faculty is a 1998 horror film/science-fiction film, written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Robert Rodríguez. The film stars Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris and Josh Hartnett.

1 Plot summary
2 Analysis
3 Trivia
4 Cast and crew
5 Soundtrack listings
6 Filming locations
7 External link

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Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Faculty is about a fictional high school, Herrington High (said to be located somewhere 'in the middle of Ohio'), at which the faculty and staff become taken over by parasitic aliens. In turn, the faculty then infects the students with the organism. A rag-tag group of six students resists, including: Zeke Tyler (Josh Hartnett), a loner and genius 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 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 Herrington, who has a crush on Delilah, and who is intelligent and a photographer for the school newspaper; Stokely 'Stokes' Mitchell (Clea DuVall), a female outcast who claims to be a lesbian in order to distance herself from people, and has a crush on Stan; and Marybeth Louise Hutchinson (Laura Harris), the new girl at school, claiming to have come from Atlanta to live with relatives because her parents had died in a car crash, and who 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 for ear inspections, where they are taken over by the parasite. Before this, however, Casey has figured out their plot (he and Delilah are hiding in the teacher's lounge closet when they see the nurse taken over by the parasite), and he warns Stokely, Delilah, and Stan. Joined by Zeke and Marybeth, who overhear them talking of aliens in the science lab, they are all convinced of Casey's theory when 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 dissolves the alien inside his brain.

Thus, they all leave the school, which has become completely infected, and go to Zeke's house with a sample of the parasite, where they verify that Zeke's drug is diuretic/desiccant and drys the alien out. Stokely speculates that destroying the queen alien will kill all the parasites, without killing their victims. Soon, the group becomes suspicious of each other. To prove that they have not been infected, they each take turns snorting the drug. When Delilah's turn came, she refused, revealing that she had already been infected. She then destroys most of Zeke's supply of the drug, as well as his equipment for producing it, before getting away. With the remainder of his drug, the remaining five go to the school (where the entire town is watching the school football game). They succeed in killing Principal Drake, but the other hosts remain unaffected and Stan is infected. 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 served as the decoy, Zeke went to his car. There, he encounters Miss Burke (Famke Janssen), who is infected; he decapitates her by driving into a bus, though she survives.

At the same time, Marybeth reveals herself to be the queen alien by changing into a large aqautic creature. Casey returns before Zeke, and he and Stokely must run from the transformed Marybeth. Zeke returns with more of the drug, only to find that Stokely, too, has been infected. He and Casey fight Marybeth, but Zeke is knocked out, leaving only Casey. In an attempt to persuade Casey into surrendering, Marybeth delivers a speech about how she crashed onto Earth, came to their school, found all of them alienated and unhappy, and started infecting them in order to create a better life for the entire world, one of harmony and acceptance. Casey fights the alien by running through the back of the gym's bleachers after triggering them to collapse against the wall, and the alien (having chased him) becomes trapped. Casey then stabs the drug into her eye, killing her.

After this, these five adolescents are completely changed--Zeke applies his genius to schoolwork and has joined the football team; 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 and Delilah is no longer vindictive.

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Analysis

The film is written by Kevin Williamson (writer of Dawson's Creek and Scream), and the characters speak allegedly clever dialogue and refer to many movies of the genre they are in (as the characters in Scream do). Directed by Robert Rodríguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, the Mariachi Trilogy), the film has a sleek look and kinetic action that, combined with what many would see as the clever writing of Williamson, make a film that can be considered a quality crowd-pleaser. However, this film never received critical acclaim from professional film critics or any film award group (AMPAS, for instance) and didn't perform exceptionally at the box office (although some credit for this may be due to a bad release date, in December, which can be considered as a holiday-centered month in which a film like this seems out of place).

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Trivia

The naming of the characters contains inside jokes, such as Principal Drake (the Drake equation being one that attempts to define the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the universe), and names referring to prophets of The Bible (Zeke is short for Ezekiel; Delilah Profit may refer to Delilah, from the book of Judges, and Profit referring to prophet).

The parking lot and football field of Lockhart High School are seen prominently throughout the film.

Tagline: Six students are about to find out their teachers really are from another planet.

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