Elijah Wood
Performer for Our Time
The Faculty
(1998)
Review
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Elijah Wood Performer for Our Time The Faculty Review |
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The Faculty (1998) |
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Edward C. Patterson, site owner |
C+
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| The Faculty,
starring Elijah Wood and a host of others, is a mix of formulas from the
old Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the I Know What you Did
Last Summer. It’s a mix of teenage acne, with all the most common types
right off the shelf, and Ray Bradbury SciFi, only without the good script
that a Bradbury could craft. The acting, however, is solid enough to keep
you from the Raisenets, if you gave logic a break.
The snappy teens are represented by Josh Harnett, who plays Zeke, the over sexed, potty mouthed, drug dealer, who is a genius in disguise and has a mother who we don’t see and neither does he, which is probably his problem. Elijah Wood, who plays Casey, a "Stephen King geek" who manages to figure out why the faculty has gone strange. Shawn Hatosy, the football jock and Jordana Brewster, the prom queen, and of course, Cleo DuVall as the spooky Stokely, a girl in black and possible sociopath. The faculty is a lineup of veteran actors—Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwith, Daniel Von Burgen, Robert Patrick and upcoming Salma Hayek. With this many actors, the script is minced into dozens of vignettes, all buoying up interest for the viewer and also hoping that the gazillions of logic holes go unnoticed. There’s blood, gruesome scenes of gore and tentacles, violence and horrible conversion as the Faculty is taken over by something (I’ll not tell). The performers earn their paychecks and in one scene, when the teens take some drugs (experimental to be sure), the acting grows beyond supporting and shines, but on the whole, you must suspend belief and go with the flow. After all, you’re watching this film for the spills and chills and not the mystery of life, which, by the way, it tries to foist on you at some level, happily too deep to come across. Elijah Wood does not steal the show this time, as he does so often with so many other films. It is clear, however that his next film ought to be something more challenging to his brilliant acting, something like The Fellowship of the Ring, might do him fine, I say. While The Faculty is not the worst teen-bopper, cursing up a storm, body-possessing SciFi in the heap and is eminently watchable, I would not give it the fear factor equivalent of Jaws or even Jaws II. (Not even Flipper, for that matter). I rate it C+ (the plus for the wonderful tweaking scene) and might inch it up to a B- for Elijah Wood fans. |