Review of Faculty, The

Introduction

Small town Ohio plays treat to alien goings on at Herrington High. Here we have a group of high school students who become aware of something very odd happening at their school. Teachers aren`t themselves and seem to be continually thirsty, while slowly the whole climate of the school seems to change through its students. Everyone`s acting plain weird and follows from the discovery of some kind of creature found in the school grounds. This creature turns out to be something never seen before and it slowly dawns on our intrepid band of merry students that this thing is responsible for these odd goings on. Time is critical if the alien invasion is to be stopped in its tracks.

Video

The anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer to DVD is pretty good overall with little sign of compression. Colours appear solid and vibrant throughout with deep blacks and a high level of detail coming through. Very impressive.

Audio

There`s good use of music and sound throughout, definitely one to pump up on a Friday night. The effects certainly have punch when needed and the music level sounds right. Dialogue is clear and well balanced from the centre speaker.

Features

Buena Vista have done an extremely poor job in terms of extras on this disc. There are none. You get chapter selection, English only 5.1 audio and English only subtitles all with static menus. This is it and I think it`s very poor. I`d love to hear commentary from Robert Rodriguez.

Conclusion

Perhaps it`s in the B-Movie film tradition to do away with the whys and wherefores of the alien domination that we get sucked into the whole silliness of it and just enjoy the film and in this regard it reminds me of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The Faculty is firmly entrenched in the sci-fi genre and is well written by Kevin Williamson (Scream) who paints equally good characters of the students and the teachers. Robert Patrick, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen and Bebe Neuwirth all deliver creepy performances with zest while their opposition in Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster and the rest are well played too. Don`t forget about Robert Rodriguez`s pacey direction and editing. He`s well suited to the task in hand and he delivers an interesting looking film with some very nice special effects.

I would definately recommend watching The Faculty as it`s good fun all round. The stereotyped characters work well within the story and I found the pace well balanced throughout. There`s a great picture and sound transfer here but it`s a shame there aren`t any extras available, not even cast and crew bios. Extras make the difference between buying and borrowing a disc and I can`t say buy this DVD at full price. It`s definitely worth watching however so borrow or buy on the cheap.