In one of the very few instances of critics and crowds being on exactly the same page, The Faculty is held in exactly the same regard by both parties on Rotten Tomatoes via respective 55 percent scores. And yet, that doesn’t even come close to telling the whole story.
On the aggregation site, the succinct summary of the film calls it “a ripoff of other sci-fi thrillers”. At the time, critics were negatively comparing the box office sleeper hit to the back catalogue of John Carpenter (particularly The Thing for obvious reasons), Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Carrie, Blue Velvet, and even Wes Craven’s classic slasher Scream – thanks to a typically meta and self-aware screenplay from writer Kevin Williamson.
While all of those criticisms are valid to a certain extent, The Faculty hasn’t remained a perennially popular favorite among genre aficionados for close to 25 years for no reason. Sure, it takes a lot of different elements from a number of beloved titles, but there’s a real mean streak shot through the entire thing – with the effects suitably gory and the tone deftly balanced between terror and camp.
Robert Rodriguez was a left-field but inspired choice to direct, with his previous feature From Dusk till Dawn underlining his credentials for turning conventions and tropes on their heads in suitably unhinged fashion. Throw in a cast stacked to the rafters with current and future stars that numbered Josh Hartnett, Clea DuVall, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Christopher McDonald, Robert Patrick, Usher, Jon Stewart, and Elijah Wood among others, and you get a setup cribbed from the classics that still manages to stand on its own two feet.
As evidenced by a Reddit thread celebrating the many merits of The Faculty, the dismissive nature with which it was first greeted is neither fair, nor deserved.