At Herrington High School, faculty and staff are being taken over by alien parasites. A rag-tag group of six students form a resistance cell. There is Zeke Tyler (Josh Hartnett),
a loner repeating his senior year because he did not care about
graduating, whose parents travel constantly so as to 'get away from
their big bastard mistake'. He sells, among other illegal items, a
cocaine-like drug of his own creation to his fellow students. Stan
Rosado (Shawn Hatosy),
is a jock who decides during his Senior year to quit the football team
and focus on his academics. Stan's girlfriend Delilah Profit (Jordana Brewster) is a popular, vindictive girl who is the editor in chief of the student paper. Casey Connor (Elijah Wood)
is an outcast picked on by the students at Herrington. He is a
photographer for the paper and has a crush on Delilah. Stokely 'Stokes'
Mitchell (Clea DuVall) is a female outcast and literary buff who despite her claims as a lesbian has feelings for Stan. Marybeth Louise Hutchinson (Laura Harris)
is the new girl at school, who came from Atlanta to live with relatives
because her parents died in a car crash. She befriends Stokes and 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 one by one for ear inspections, where they
are taken over.
Casey figures this out and soon warns the other five. During the meeting in Mr. Furlong's (the science teacher) (Jon Stewart)
class, he enters the room and acts suspicious, leading to an
altercation in which ultimately ends up with attempts to infect Zeke
with the alien, but Zeke pulls out a pen filled with his drug, and jams
it into Furlong's eye, which then dries out the alien inside of him,
killing the alien organism as the drug is a diuretic and the aliens require excessive amounts of water to cope with life on Earth.
Thus, they all leave the school, which has become completely
infected (only the six of them remain uninfected), and go to Zeke's
house with a sample of the parasite. Stokely speculates that destroying
the queen alien will kill all the parasites, without killing their
victims. Soon, the group becomes suspicious of each other, each of them
citing such actions as Stan's recent shift from football to academics
and Casey's sudden courage as potential evidence that they are not who
they say they are. They each take turns snorting the drug to prove that
they have not been infected. When Delilah's turn comes, she snorts the
drug and parasites crawl under her skin, revealing that she has already
been infected. She then destroys most of Zeke's supply of the drug, as
well as his equipment for producing it, before escaping. The remaining
five, with what is left of the drug, go to the school, where the entire
town is watching the school football game. They believe Principal Drake
(Bebe Neuwirth)
to be the queen and succeed in killing her, but the other hosts remain
unaffected. The five send Stan to investigate the field, and Stokeley
and Stan share their first kiss. Stan subsequently becomes infected
when he goes onto the field. 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
serves as a decoy, Zeke goes to his car. There, he encounters Miss
Burke (Famke Janssen). He seemingly kills her, but her now alien physiology allows her to survive what would otherwise be a fatal injury.
Marybeth reveals herself to be the queen alien; she had escaped
snorting the drug by biological trickery. She came to take over Earth
as her own planet is dying. She chases Stokely and Casey. Stokely is
badly injured, then infected and Zeke is knocked out in the locker
room. Casey runs back to the gym area and tricks the alien into
following him behind the now-closing bleachers. The machinery traps
what used to be Marybeth. Casey jams the last of the drugs into
Marybeth's eye, before being infected himself, killing her. With
Marybeth dead, Casey's and the rest of the parasites die and the
students and teachers all return to normal.
After this, the group shows big changes, including the faculty. Zeke
applies his genius to schoolwork and joins the football team (and seems
to be dating Miss Burke). Coach Joe Willis is still coaching the
football team. Stan and Stokely become a couple and share their second
kiss, Delilah and Casey do the same (they share their first kiss).
Casey is more accepted at school (with various papers talking about
his extraterrestrial encounter, despite the official denial of the FBI),
and Delilah is no longer vindictive. In the background of the final
scene, students are seen bullying another student in the same way they
picked on Casey. During the credits, it is seen that Mr. Furlong has
survived, although missing the eye in which he was earlier stabbed and
some fingers on his right hand.
Reviews were mixed, but tended towards the positive. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
tallied thirty-six reviews from critics (with nineteen listed as
positive and seventeen listed as negative) to give 'The Faculty' a 53%,
calling it a 'rip-off of other sci-fi thrillers'.[1]Metacritic gave 'The Faculty' a score of 61.[2]
The Faculty was viewed on 2,365 screens its opening weekend, debuting at #5 in the US, making $11,633,495.[3] Its eventual domestic gross was $40,283,321.[4]
The score is composed by Marco Beltrami, who had previously scored the teen-slasher-horror film, Scream, as well as Mimic. Both Beltrami's score[5]
and songs by various artists used in the film were released as albums.
The "music from the motion picture" album features songs by various indie and alternative rock groups.
The Faculty was one of the few Robert Rodriguez films not to
receive special treatment on DVD. Missing are traditional extras
typical for a Robert Rodriguez DVD including "10 Minute Film School",
audio commentary and making-of featurettes.
Several scenes involving an additional character named Venus, played by Kidada Jones, were shown in previews but cut from the film.[citation needed]
The film's poster features Usher (who plays Gabe, a minor character), but not Shawn Hatosy (who plays Stan, one of the leads).
