THE FACULTY

• Starring Elijah Woods and Bebe Neuwirth
• Directed by Robert Rodriguez
• Rated R, with much gore, profanity; running time 90 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 3

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(Dec. 25, 1998) -- You may have thought your teachers were from another planet. But in The Faculty, they really are.

This new horror flick, from director Robert Rodriguez, is Invasion of the Body Snatchers retooled for the high school crowd -- the viewers who've made the Scream films such big hits.

But The Faculty offers little of the suspense or imagination of the Body Snatcher movies. It's a surprisingly pedestrian affair, especially given its pedigree: Kevin Williamson, who wrote Scream, is one of its writers, and Rodriguez is the much-admired rebel director of El Mariachi and From Dusk Till Dawn.

Elijah Wood stars as Casey, a student at rundown, out-of-control Herrington High. Early on, he discovers strange goings-on among the faculty and concludes they may be possessed by aliens. Eventually he recruits other kids to help him --outsiders in the school's rigid social order -- and plot to save the world, or at least algebra class, from alien domination.

As in other Body Snatcher variations, the drama springs from not knowing who is or is not an alien. Several teachers and administrators are prime candidates, including those played by Bebe Neuwirth, Piper Laurie, Robert Patrick and, briefly, Salma Hayek. There are clues: The aliens are oddly thirsty and can change into slimy monsters.

At any rate, for no reason at all, the kids surmise that all the aliens will die if they can only discover the chief "host" body and kill it.