Christmas of 1998 gave moviegoers two gifts: Patch Adams, where Robin Williams tried to cure sadness with clown noses, and The Faculty, where Robert Rodriguez tried to cure alien possession with caffeine pills stuffed into Bic pens. Only one of these films deserves to be unwrapped again. Spoiler: it’s the one where Jon Stewart gets stabbed in the eye with homemade speed.
Yes, The Faculty is dumb. Gleefully dumb. But it’s also one of those rare late-90s teen horror flicks that knew exactly what it was—a Frankenstein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, and The Stepford Wives, all dressed up in Hot Topic eyeliner and Abercrombie sweaters. If you went to high school in the 90s, this was less science fiction and more a documentary.
Welcome to Herrington High, Population: Tropes
Every clique is represented here. You’ve got Elijah Wood as Casey, the bullied nerd who looks like his parents accidentally sent him to prison instead of high school. Jordana Brewster, in her debut, plays Delilah, the mean-girl cheerleader who uses Casey as her unpaid intern. Josh Hartnett oozes grease as Zeke, the drug-dealing genius who should be in college but apparently loves failing senior year so he can sell uppers to his peers. Clea DuVall is Stokely, the goth girl who pretends to be a lesbian because, in 1998, that was shorthand for “leave me alone.” Shawn Hatosy plays Stan, the jock with a soul, because every horror movie needs one guy whose arc is realizing football isn’t everything.
Then there’s Laura Harris as Marybeth, the new transfer student with wide eyes and a suspiciously Southern accent. She’s too perky, too sweet, too “I’ve never dissected a frog before.” Which of course means she’s hiding something—like, say, an intergalactic parasite queen in her ribcage.
Teachers Behaving Badly
The faculty is a who’s-who of “Wait, they were in this?” Robert Patrick as a psychotic football coach whose veins look ready to pop from sheer alien testosterone. Bebe Neuwirth as the principal, stabbed with scissors in the first ten minutes because Dimension Films demanded we start with a bang. Famke Janssen as the mousy English teacher who gets sexually reprogrammed into a leather-clad cougar. And Jon Stewart as the science teacher, who has the audacity to look at an alien parasite under a microscope and not immediately set himself on fire.
This cast list reads like somebody shook a Hollywood snow globe and wrote down the first twelve names that fell out. Usher? Sure, give him three lines. Salma Hayek as a nurse with the flu? Why not. Piper Laurie, Oscar nominee, as a background extra who stabs the principal? Absolutely.
The Plot: Just Add Water
The formula is simple: aliens are taking over the school by crawling into people’s ears. Casey and Delilah stumble on the conspiracy, and soon the outcasts are holed up in Zeke’s basement meth lab (a sentence that was probably in Kevin Williamson’s first draft exactly as written). They discover the aliens are allergic to caffeine—or rather, Zeke’s sketchy concoction of powdered speed, ground-up NoDoz, and possibly crushed drywall.
It’s here the movie makes its boldest statement: drugs save lives. Forget D.A.R.E., kids. If your teacher sprouts tentacles, stab them in the eye with your dealer’s pencil stash.
Special Effects, or Lack Thereof
For 1998, the effects were… ambitious. Rodriguez gives us rubbery tentacles, exploding heads, and at one point, a literal CGI alien queen squeezing her way through the bleachers like a Play-Doh Fun Factory. The practical gore lands better than the digital—Jon Stewart’s half-melted face is still a minor miracle of the effects department. But when the alien queen goes full kaiju in the gym, you can almost hear the effects team muttering, “Nobody’s going to watch this sober anyway.”
Character Arcs: High School Musical, but Slimier
Every teen gets a redemption arc. Stan quits football because he wants to “use his brain.” Stokely realizes she doesn’t need to cosplay misery to find love. Delilah learns not to be a raging narcissist (briefly). Casey grows a spine, proving that if you’re humiliated enough in high school, one day you’ll get to kill an alien queen and date Jordana Brewster. Zeke, meanwhile, evolves from burnout drug dealer to… football star. Yes, by the epilogue, the school has not only forgiven his crimes but given him a jersey. This is America, after all. If you can throw a ball, you’re untouchable.
Kevin Williamson’s Fingerprints
You can smell Scream all over this script. Snarky meta-dialogue about horror clichés, horny teenagers making poor decisions, and villains monologuing like they’re auditioning for a TED Talk. At one point, Stokely explains the entire alien invasion theory using Invasion of the Body Snatchers as her CliffsNotes. That’s right—the movie openly acknowledges the better films it’s ripping off, then shrugs and says, “But do those movies have Josh Hartnett selling meth out of a Bic pen?”
Why It Works Anyway
On paper, this movie should’ve been unwatchable: a stitched-together mess of clichés, teen melodrama, and studio meddling. And yet, it’s fun. Rodriguez directs with a punk energy, like he knows the material is trash but he’s going to set it on fire anyway. The cast plays it straight, which only makes the absurdity funnier. And the pacing is so relentless that you don’t have time to question why an alien parasite needs a high school football team to take over Earth.
Plus, the soundtrack is a time capsule of late-90s alt-rock: The Offspring, Garbage, and a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” that’s so aggressively 1998 it should come with a copy of Rolling Stone and a free Discman.
Cult Status, Deserved
When The Faculty dropped on Christmas Day, critics rolled their eyes, and audiences mostly ignored it. But like its alien parasites, the movie slowly burrowed into pop culture’s ear canal. Today it’s celebrated as a cult gem, the perfect mix of dumb and smart, scary and campy. It’s what happens when The X-Files sneaks into Dawson’s Creek with a trunk full of Monster energy drinks.
Elijah Wood would go on to become Frodo. Jordana Brewster would graduate to Fast & Furious. Josh Hartnett would spend two decades being Hollywood’s favorite “almost star.” And Usher… well, Usher’s still Usher. But here, for 104 glorious minutes, they were united against the most dangerous threat of all: gym teachers with gills.
Final Verdict
The Faculty is the best kind of stupid: slick, self-aware, and proudly wearing its influences like a thrift-store Letterman jacket. It’s not horror, not really sci-fi, not even satire—just a caffeinated love letter to every paranoid teen fantasy about school being literally evil.
It teaches us one great lesson: trust the weirdos, buy drugs from Josh Hartnett, and if your coach tries to tackle you with tentacles, aim for the eye.
