Using the best Rod "The Twilight Zone" Serling impression that you can muster in your head, entertain the following: "Imagine if you will, a Hollywood movie that has pilfered elements from other successful films, put its own unique spin on them, and then turned around and tried to sell it to audiences as if it were new. If cinematically unaware, moviegoers won't know that they've unfortunately stumbled into...The Ripoff Zone."
Yes, if you can imagine the resulting offspring of a pairing of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "The Breakfast Club" you'd come pretty close to getting this film. Although director Robert Rodriguez ("From Dusk Till Dawn," "Desperado") and writer Kevin Williamson (the "Scream" films, "I Know What You Did Last Summer") give the combo material a fresh and glossy coating, and add a few spins to keep the audience on their toes, this is just more of the same old, same old.
From the stereotypical students (one could easily interchange these characters with the ones from John Hughes 1985 comedy, "The Breakfast Club," without much of a difference) to the aliens have taken over their bodies plot (seen in the 1956 and 1978 versions of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and other films such as "The Puppet Masters"), everything that occurs here is simply a retreading of material we've already seen.
In fact, it's quite sad when characters (and filmmakers) have to reference other films (particularly ones with nearly the same plot) to figure out how to save themselves (or the characters they've created). While such cinematic references worked in "Scream," they seem more contrived here even when the film is recreating scenes from such other sci-fi flicks like "Invasion" and "The Thing."
That said, for those not familiar with the previous installments of those "Invasion" films, the proceedings here may be entertaining. The film does pick up steam as it draws toward its predictable and mildly suspenseful finale and does exhibit a bit of campy fun. Nonetheless, it's highly unlikely that the movie will play beyond the older teen and college audience for whom it's so obviously aimed. Not surprisingly, it should head for the video stores faster than most of the cast here become "alienated."
Speaking of such, the film's actors and actresses deliver standard-issue performances for this sort of genre, but not much more. With a bevy of stereotypical high school student parts -- the picked on normal kid, the cheerleader snob, the withdrawn loner, the misunderstood jock, and the smarter than he looks drug dealer -- there's obviously only so much the cast can do with their characters. In addition and regarding their dialogue, horror scribe Williamson -- who's demonstrated a penchant for wit in his past scripts -- leaves these performers high and dry for the most part.
Josh Hartnett, who was rather flat in "Halloween: H20," gets the best part as the Matt "Good Will Hunting" Damon-like character (the brilliant, but misguided young man). Elijah Wood ("The Ice Storm"), while appropriately playing his paranoia inspired character, was seemingly cast because of his expertise at delivering that wide-eyed, dumbfounded look. Meanwhile, the rest of the relatively unknown cast can't do much with their stereotyped characters.
On the "grownup" side, the cast is pretty much reduced to playing similarly constructed school staff (the "in your face" coach, the dowdy drama teacher, the cool biology teacher, etc...) who then get to demonstrate their acting prowess by playing zombie-like characters.
Robert Patrick, who effectively played Schwarzenegger's intense nemesis in "Terminator 2" and Bebe Neuwirth, who inhabited a similarly cold character as Lilith on TV's "Cheers," are the best of the bunch, but only because they've had the most experience playing those types of parts. Otherwise, performers such as Salma Hayek ("Desperado"), Famke Janssen ("Goldeneye") and particularly comedian Jon Stewart (who makes his big screen debut) are mostly wasted in their small roles.
Director Rodriguez, who showed such entertaining visual flair in his previous efforts, unfortunately delivers a relatively flat picture here, mostly relying on computer special effects to enliven the proceedings. While some of them are "fun" -- if you're into creepy, crawly, and occasionally quite big critters -- they're not particularly outstanding, although one scene involving a rather lively and detached head really had the audience howling in glee.
Fortunately for the film -- and the audience -- this is when the picture finally picks up the pace and quickly zips along to its conclusion. Nonetheless, while it will probably please its target audience, it is otherwise completely -- and apparently purposefully -- derivative of other works and thus loses many points for being bereft of much originality.
Lacking the efforts of Williamson's previous wit and clever setup (high school as a literal hell and zombies as anti-conformity symbolism are too easy), and missing Rodriguez's aggressive visual flair, the film comes off as mildly entertaining, somewhat suspenseful, but clearly earmarked for a better life once on video. We give "The Faculty" a 3.5 out of 10.