A star-studded sci-fi never deserves to be called fake

about Miramax

In one of the few instances where critics and audiences are on exactly the same page, the faculty is rated exactly the same by both sides at Rotten Tomatoes, each with a 55 percent rating. And yet that doesn’t even come close to telling the whole story.

On the aggregation page, the succinct summary of the film states “a rip off of other sci-fi thrillers”. At the time, critics negatively compared the box office hit to John Carpenter’s back catalog (particularly the thing for obvious reasons) Invasion of the Body Snatchers, carrie, blue velvetand even Wes Craven’s classic slasher Scream — thanks to a typically meta- and self-aware screenplay by writer Kevin Williamson.

While all of these criticisms are valid to some extent, the faculty is not without reason a perennial favorite among genre lovers for almost 25 years. Sure, it takes many different elements from a range of popular titles, but there’s a genuinely mean streak through it all – with suitably gory effects and a tone cleverly balanced between terror and camp.

Robert Rodriguez was a left fielder but an inspired choice to direct with his previous feature film From dusk to dawn which underscores his credentials for turning convention and trope on its head in appropriately wacky ways. Throw in a cast stacked to the rafters with current and future stars that included Josh Hartnett, Clea DuVall, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Christopher McDonald, Robert Patrick, Usher, Jon Stewart and Elijah Wood, and you get a setup stolen from the classics that still stand on their own two feet.

As evidenced by a Reddit thread celebrating the many merits of the facultythe dismissive manner in which it was first greeted is neither fair nor deserved.