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The Faculty is a 1998 American science fiction horror film directed and edited by Robert Rodriguez with a screenplay by Kevin Williamson, about a group of high school students who begin to suspect that their teachers are being replaced by extraterrestrials. It stars Jordana Brewster in her film debut, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Usher Raymond, Jon Stewart, and Elijah Wood.
The film was theatrically released on December 25, 1998, by Miramax through Dimension Films. It grossed $63.2 million and has developed a cult following since its release.
The following morning, the students arrive, including Casey Connor, the dedicated but perpetually harassed photographer for the school newspaper. Casey is the unappreciated assistant to spiteful Delilah Profitt, the paper's editor-in-chief and head cheerleader. Delilah's mistreated boyfriend Stan Rosado is contemplating quitting the football team to pursue academics. Zeke Tyler is an intelligent yet rebellious student repeating his senior year. Zeke sells, among other illegal items, a powdery MDMA-like drug he distributes hidden in ballpoint pens. He is confronted by teacher Elizabeth Burke, who expresses concern for him over his illegal activities. Naive transfer student Marybeth Louise Hutchinson befriends self-styled outcast Stokely Mitchell, who has deliberately spread rumors that she is a lesbian though she has a crush on Stan. Marybeth develops a crush on Zeke which is reciprocated.
Casey finds a strange creature on the football field and takes it to science teacher Mr. Furlong, who believes it is a new species of cephalopod-specific parasite called a . Delilah and Casey hide in the teachers' lounge to find a story. They witness Coach Willis and Ms. Olson forcing one of the parasites into the ear of the school nurse. They also find the body of another teacher, Mrs. Brummel. Casey and Delilah flee, and Casey calls the police, but his claims are dismissed.
The next day, Casey tells Delilah, Stan, and Stokely he believes the teachers are being controlled by aliens. After Zeke and Marybeth tease them about their theory, Mr. Furlong attempts to infect them. Zeke injects his homemade drugs into Furlong's eye, killing him. Zeke takes the five to his house, where he experiments on a specimen retrieved by Casey. He discovers it needs water to survive and can be killed by his "drug", revealed to actually be raw, powdered caffeine (as caffeine acts to dehydrate the user, and the aliens are hyper-sensitive to hydration of both themselves and their host). Zeke makes everyone take his drug to prove they are uninfected. Delilah is revealed as infected and she destroys Zeke's lab and most of his drug supply before escaping.
Acting on Stokely's speculation that killing the alien queen will revert everyone to normal, the group returns to the school, where their football team is playing and infecting opposing players. Believing Principal Drake to be the queen, they isolate her in the gym and fatally shoot her. Stan confronts the coach and team to see if the plan worked, but becomes infected himself. Zeke and Casey retrieve more of Zeke's drugs from his car. Casey leads infected students away from Zeke, who encounters Miss Burke in the parking lot and incapacitates her.
At the gym, Marybeth reveals herself to be the alien queen; earlier on, she faked taking the drug. Casey and Stokely flee to the swimming pool, where Stokely is injured and becomes infected. Zeke and Casey hide in the locker room, where Marybeth reverts to her human disguise. She explains she is taking over Earth because her planet is dying. Marybeth transforms back into her true form and hurls Zeke across the room into the lockers, knocking him out. Casey seizes the drug and traps the queen behind retracting bleachers. Just as the queen infects him, he stabs the drug into her eye, killing her and halting his infection. Casey returns to the locker room and finds Stokely and Zeke alive.
One month later, everyone has returned to normal. Stan and Stokely, who has shed her goth girl image, are now dating. Zeke has taken Stan's place on the football team, while Miss Burke affectionately watches him practice. Delilah, no longer vindictive, is now dating Casey, who is considered a local hero as various news media reveal the attempted alien invasion is now public knowledge, even as the FBI denies it.
The Faculty takes place in the fictional town of Herrington, Ohio, but was shot in Austin, San Marcos, Dallas, and Lockhart, Texas. In a retrospective interview, Clea Duvall said the making of the film "was so much fun. It was mostly night shoots, so it was like we were in this alternate universe. Working all night long and making this fun sci-fi horror movie. I loved it."
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In 2005, Dimension was sold by the Walt Disney Company, with Disney later selling off the parent label Miramax in 2010. Miramax and the rights to the pre–October 2005 Dimension library were subsequently taken over by private equity firm Filmyard Holdings that same year. Filmyard licensed the home video rights for high-profile Dimension/Miramax titles to Lionsgate Films, with lower-profile titles and niche horror titles being licensed to Echo Bridge Entertainment. The film received its first U.S. Blu-ray release on September 11, 2012, through Echo Bridge. In 2014, Filmyard Holdings terminated their home video agreement with Echo Bridge, with the film receiving a U.S. Blu-ray reissue on October 7, 2014, from Lionsgate Home Entertainment. The Lionsgate Blu-ray included a digital download code for the film. During Filmyard's ownership of Miramax, they had agreements with other local distributors, some of which existed during the Disney ownership era. International Blu-ray releases for The Faculty occurred in several countries: in Canada on October 6, 2009, by Alliance Films; in Australia on September 1, 2011, by Reel Corporation; in the United Kingdom on October 3, 2011, by Lionsgate; in Germany on October 6, 2011, by Studio Canal; and in France on January 10, 2012, by Studio Canal. In 2011, Filmyard Holdings licensed the Miramax library and pre–October 2005 Dimension library to streamer Netflix. This deal included The Faculty, which was available on the service for five years, eventually being removed on June 1, 2016.
Filmyard Holdings sold Miramax to Qatari company beIN Media Group in March 2016. In April 2020, ViacomCBS (now known as Paramount Skydance) acquired the rights to Miramax's library and Dimension's pre–October 2005 library after buying a 49% stake in Miramax from beIN. The Faculty was among the 700 titles Paramount acquired in the deal, and it has been distributed by Paramount Pictures since April 2020. As part of the deal, Paramount entered into a first-look agreement with beIN/Miramax, which allows Paramount to release any future projects based on Miramax and pre–October 2005 Dimension properties.
In late 2020, Paramount Home Entertainment began reissuing many of the Dimension/Miramax titles they had acquired, and on September 22, 2020, they released another Blu-ray edition of The Faculty. Paramount later sublicensed the home video rights for the film to Shout! Factory's horror label Scream Factory, and on December 17, 2024, Scream Factory released a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray of the film. Home media for The Faculty, including recent releases, have not included any traditional extras provided for other Robert Rodriguez films, such as a "10-Minute Film School" feature, audio commentaries, and making-of featurettes.
On March 4, 2021, The Faculty was made available on Paramount's then-new streaming service Paramount+ as one of its inaugural launch titles. Paramount also included it on their free streaming service Pluto TV.
Positive reviews at the time praised Kevin Williamson's self-aware script and trademark meta humor that included references to iconic science-fiction films. In a review for Variety, Dennis Harvey wrote, " The Faculty works hard at mixing a canny cocktail of cineastic in-jokes, affectionate teenploitation and high-octane suspense that's as enjoyable as it is impossible to take seriously." Harvey added that Williamson and Robert Rodriguez combine to "make a complete lack of socially redeeming value seem so much fun that 'The Faculty
Michael Sauter of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a grade of B− and expressed a wish that the film had used the faculty characters more. In contrast, Tom Sinclair, also of EW, gave the film a C+ and said Williamson has become "too invested in the earnestness of teen angst to portray it in the scathing parodistic terms a hip horror movie demands". The New York Times gave a mostly negative review but praised the cast. The Austin Chronicle awarded the film 3.5 stars and said, "While it may suffer a bit from excess character clutter (nearly 10 major characters throughout), it's nonetheless a slam-bang, sci-fi actioner, relentlessly paced and edited, with a pounding soundtrack and some ingenious aliens courtesy of Bernie Wrightson and KNB Effects."
Director Ryan Coogler cited The Faculty as one of the inspirations for his 2025 film Sinners. Coogler said, "I love The Faculty from Rodriguez. I love how he mashed up Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing, but set it in a 1990s high school. I love the confusing mishmash of movie and setting."
Jordana Brewster reflected on the contrast between The Faculty and The Fast and the Furious, noting that they expected The Faculty to be a massive hit due to the success of teen movies, such as Scream, at the time. She recalled thinking it would make them huge stars: “We all thought we were gonna be these huge teen stars... but it didn’t quite work out that way.” Despite the film’s initial underperformance, she is now proud of its cult status, which she finds "cool".
Clea DuVall also discussed the film's initial reception, noting that it did not have the impact they expected during its release, despite the popularity of Kevin Williamson's work at the time. However, she has been pleased to see The Facultys lasting influence: "It's cool to see the legs that movie has had." She acknowledged that people still recognize her as Stokely, the character she portrayed, which continues to be a huge part of her legacy: "I feel like that is the number one thing that people come up to me and say or recognize me from still." DuVall mentioned that while she does not fully understand why the film did not perform better initially, she believes that broader cultural conversations may be partly responsible for its rediscovery.
Elijah Wood described his experience on The Faculty as one of his most memorable. He said, "For all around experience, I would say The Faculty because the crew was so amazing. Robert was amazing to work with. There aren't enough adjectives to describe how cool it was working with him." He went on to emphasize the fun and unique atmosphere on set, stating, "It was so fun getting a chance to work with Robert, who had a very different approach than any other director that I'd worked with." Wood also highlighted the close-knit environment, noting, "There was a lot of love on the set. We're all really close, so it was cool."
Experts also noted in The Faculty a reinvention of the fear of female sexuality often found in the horror genre. The character of Marybeth, the alien queen, is "a complex imbrication of woman, alien and power" that acts beyond the role of femme fatale. She masquerades as a virginal, unassuming girl clad in floral dresses, but at the final battle she reveals her true sexual threat, becoming nude by her alien transformation and turning confident and flirtatious. Her role as a threatening, Castration agent is underlined by the sharp teeth of her species, which evoke a vagina dentata, and their association to water, the archaic, womb-like female element. As the Archaic mother of her race, she tries to seduce the heroes by offering them a symbolic return to the womb. As Sharon Packer and Jody Pennington put it:
The image on the screen is dual: we see the beautiful, young, naked Marybeth strolling around looking for Casey, and the shadow of the monstrous form in the walls. Marybeth delivers a speech which ties the elements of the movie together. It is about the "world" she came from and its promises of "paradise" for lost and lonely humans, trapped in high-school "hell".
The character of Miss Burke precedes Marybeth in the same line, revealing her hidden sexuality only after being infected and turned into a monster. The scene of her detached, tentacled head in particular echoes the Sigmund Freud Medusa head. The monstrous feminine is therefore used in the film to reflect the teenage characters entering adult world, where they are forced to "come to terms with female sexuality and overcome their fear of its 'monstrous' aspects in order to become fully functioning adults". Casey, the male character closest to his softer, feminine side, is the final hero of the film.
| 1999 | ALMA Award | Outstanding Latino Director of a Feature Film | Robert Rodriguez | |
| Saturn Awards | Best Horror Film | The Faculty | ||
| Best Performance by a Younger Actor/Actress | Josh Hartnett | |||
| Blockbuster Entertainment Award | Favorite Actor – Horror | Elijah Wood | ||
| Favorite Female Newcomer | Clea DuVall | |||
| Teen Choice Award | Choice Movie: Breakout Star | |||
| Choice Movie: Disgusting Scene | Laura Harris | |||
| Choice Movie: Soundtrack | The Faculty: Music from the Dimension Motion Picture |
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