Just the Ticket #155: The Faculty (List Lookback To School)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Ticketmaster.

This week, it's time to go back to school, Ticketholders!

That means pencils, books, teachers' dirty looks, education, thought control, and dark sarcasm in the classroom are back on the table, and that table is shaped to discriminate against left-handed students, covered with dry chewing gum on the bottom, carved with graffiti on top, and bolted to a plastic chair so uncomfortable you'd swear the school system was literally bending you over for hours on end. At least, that's what it was like when I was in school twenty to thirty years ago....

Today, it's a coin-flip as to whether the greater danger is being homeschooled by ignorant extremist parents or being shot at in a progressive public school...and that's just us white people!

So if you'd prefer to spend your first week back in school as a student of escapist cynicism, please remember to Enroll As A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment your opinions on the lesson plan at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read because teachers probably get paid more than I do, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest scholastic news on my alien-dehydrating content.

Filmed mostly at night in Ohio, Texas by El Mariachi Trilogy director and Spy Kids creator Robert Rodriguez, based on a script by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson, and released on Christmas in 1998, The Faculty is at once a movie of its time (semi-questionable CGI and that awkward, late-90s edge, to say nothing of the dated technology, social group stereotyping, and fashion on display) and timeless enough to become a fan-theorized part of the Cabin In the Woods Universe.

Not even waiting a full minute to earn an R rating, The Faculty opens with foul-mouthed, stock Midwestern football coach Willis (Robert Patrick, getting to do a little T-1000 running a bit later) chewing out his team (including reluctant quarterback Stan, played by The Lazarus Project's Shawn Hatosy, and second fiddle Gabe, played by Usher, who was riding high off the success of his previous year's R&B banger album, My Way, at the time) for being slightly less than perfect, when he gets approached by an unseen figure. The following day, he begins acting calmer, colder, and thirstier, and attacks and seemingly kills the greedy, calculating Principal Drake (Jumanji's Bebe Neuwirth), aided by history teacher Mrs. Olson (Carrie's Piper Laurie, RIP 2023), who, homicidal actions obviously included, is acting out of character as well. Invasion Of the Body Snatchers-inspired plot mechanics ensue offscreen, causing the pill-popping Nurse Harper (frequent Rodriguez collaborator Salma Hayek), single teacher Miss Burke (X-Men Trilogy star Famke Janssen), science teacher Mr. Furlong (Jon Stewart, formerly of The Daily Show With Trevor Noah), and a growing number of townspeople and students, to join the hive mind.

In the beginning, perhaps to exaggerate for effect as a juxtaposition to the later, more orderly and creepy state of the school, Herrington High 

Get it?

is the kind of socially stratified, petty, ultraviolent, drug- and bullying-plagued school that would be the setting for Michelle Pfeiffer, Tom Berenger, Treat Williams, and Whoopi Goldberg to come in and start beating everyone with yo-yos, hymnals, and their bare hands before teaching them that learning is cool because mash-ups exist. Everyone, and I mean EVERY. ONE. (with the ironic exception of Midnight Run and Happy Gilmore star Christopher McDonald) in this movie is some breed or degree of intolerable asshole, even if you have to judge their intolerability and asshole levels by the standards of another intolerable asshole. But like I said, this comes to be a case of exaggeration for comparative rhetorical purposes. Is the invading alien parasite (a relatively impressive feat of late-90s CGI with a terrifyingly over-dentitioned design that looks like someone crossed a Dune worm with an angler fish while they were on LSD) the villain because it aims to conquer our planet with a conformist hive mind and suck our planet dry of all water? Or based on the microcosm of fear and hate that is Herrington High, is the world better off with six billion fewer selfish assholes in it?

Somehow, The Faculty manages to succeed in making us sympathize with the motley crew of students who band together against the growing threat, and give them visible (relative to the short, fast-paced runtime of a Scream-alike sci-fi horror movie), if not particularly deep or innovative, character arcs, and pull off a twist villain reveal that is maybe a bit too blatantly foreshadowed but landed for me the first time I watched it. Along with Stan, we have goth loner stereotype Stokely Mitchell (Identity's Clea Duvall), ruthlessly ambitchious newspaper editor Delilah Profitt (played by Fast & Furious regular Jordana Brewster, and making me slightly disappointed that the other characters didn't have equally on-the-nose names), eager school photographer Casey Connor (the closest Elijah Wood will ever get to playing Spider-Man), drug-dealing repeat Senior Zeke Tyler (Trap star Josh Hartnett, whom I hated at the time because of his overly pubescent voice and perceived lack of acting depth or skill), and saccharinely Southern new girl Marybeth Hutchinson (Laura Harris, whose first film role was as an extra in Stay Tuned, but she's better known as the voice of Bright Eyes in the 90s My Little Pony cartoon and her roles in Severance and 24). If you haven't seen The Faculty, I won't spoil the twist other than to say that one of the six students gets a lot of camera focus early on, and is given away as much by what they say as what isn't shown when they're in peril on camera.

As I said above, the lore involved here can be just as fun (if admittedly forced for the sake of having a "class subject and/or character conveniently meta-foreshadows what's going on" moment) as the viewing experience itself. The Faculty is speculated by its characters (Stokely and Casey in particular) to take place in a Universe where movies like ET, Star Wars, and Independence Day were made because Spielberg, Lucas, Emmerich (because I will never be able to escape the man), and their science-fiction predecessors and contemporaries had encounters with alien life. Add on Richard Jenkins' line from The Cabin In the Woods about the incident in '98 (which could also mean they're responsible for the 'Zilla attack on New York, but this movie seems more likely) and the similar plot elements of needing to sacrifice six teen movie stereotypes, and thirteen years later, problematic writer/director/producer Joss Whedon's subversive horror masterpiece had the fandom going theoretical apeshit.

There's even a bit of War Of the Worlds' "the mightiest threat can be undone by the tiniest of things" fablecraft and expanded Dracula mythos going on with how our group ultimately defeat the "Queen parasite," some absurdist Lovecraftian body horror that might have inspired aspects of James Gunn's Slither, a fun, campy chase sequence in the third act, and while the script, character portrayals, and horror elements scream Williamson (pun not intended), subtle touches of From Dusk 'Til Dawn's horror-comedy flavor (like the increasing amount of water deliveries as the parasite spreads, illustrated in montage form) and Rodiguez' general, "Mariachi style" (night shoots instead of using a day-for-night filter, giving focus to establishing atmosphere, "cool cars," and other found assets to keep costs down and innovation and fun high), and a 90s-as-hell soundtrack featuring B-sides by Creed, Oasis, Garbage, Soul Asylum, Cheryl Crow, and Mr. "Lullabye" himself Shawn Mullins, plus The Offspring and Class Of '99 (a supergroup comprised of Alice In Chains' Lanye Staley, Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, Jane's Addiction's Stephen Perkins, Porno For Pyros' Martyn LeNoble, and Collective Soul's Matt Serletic, who were formed solely to cover Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In the Wall" for this movie's soundtrack) give The Faculty a ton of personality.

That is a long, long sentence! So long that I think a body-snatched Coach Willis would enjoy chasing it (because it's a run-on, right?). But, yeah; The Faculty is packed with talent on all sides, has virtually no downtime, and even the parts I didn't really like (the hyperbolic, stock-mean teen movie stereotypes and the derivative plot) had an artistic purpose that I could understand, and they evolved beyond those flat categorizations through the course of the movie. Also, is it wrong or weird that one of my early teen fantasies was a softcore death battle between Ripley-8 and the Parasite Queen?

...

...

So, uh..., yeah; the elephant in the room, as was the case with Pulp Fiction and a massive chunk of the Children Of the Corn movies, was the attachment of Miramax and Dimension Films on the production/distribution side of things. Which means one might spin their metaphorical mental hamster wheels imagining what number of other things the Weinstein brothers might have stuck their fingers in during the creative process. But (partially because Pulp Fiction is a fucking great movie, and partially because, by the time I had made the realization, the Children Of the Corn sequels had become really fucking not-great movies) I decided that I would not let the questionable nature of any of the films' participants bias my enjoyment of those films.

The Faculty is a solid, fun sci-fi horror movie that is just about as good as I remember, and while it isn't as quotable as Pulp Fiction, Independence Day, or Joy Ride, as over-the-top cool as Shoot 'Em Up, as watchably bad as One Night At McCool's, as derivatively comfortable as Last Man Standing or Identity, or as atmospherically perfect as Alien, I love it.

A-

Don't worry; I'm wearing pants! I mean, I'm not an alien.... So please remember to Enroll As A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment your opinions on the lesson plan at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read because teachers probably get paid more than I do, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest scholastic news on my alien-dehydrating content.

Ticketmaster,

Too dehydrated to be a shapeshifting alien tentacle-fish-monster,

Class dismissed!