"The Faculty: Horror In The Halls" (January '99 Sci-Fi Teen)
By Kerry O'Quinn with Michael Gingold
"High school is probably the most uncomfortable point in anyone's life," says the 30-year-old director Robert Rodriguez on the set of The Faculty, a science-fiction thriller to be released by Dimension Films December 25. The film features a cast of talented teen actors playing students trapped in a nightmare of alien terror.
Herrington High is a worn-out school in a small Ohio town (though the movie is being filmed in Rodriguez's hometown of Autin,TX). Like most high schools, Herrington has a social structure within the student body that seems to pigeonhole everyone. Either you're popular or you're not. Either you're in or you're out. Either you're a stud jock or a perky cheerleader, or an intellectual misfit or a wimpy nerd. In this last category is Casey, the movie's focal character and the school punching bag, played by 17-year-old Elijah Wood. "Casey is sort of the opposite of me," Wood chuckles during a break in filming, "because I'm more confident, and he's not confident at all. He's sort of weak."
Casey may be a geek, but he's smart, and he's the first student to suspect that something strange is going on at Herrington High. Members of the faculty seem altered, possessed by a strange force. Coach Dick Willis (Robert Patrick from Terminator 2), for example, is no longer rough and unreasonable; suddenly, he's sensitive and understanding. Formerly meek drama teacher Mrs. Olson (Piper Laurie from Carrie) has now become an overbearing woman who dominates the other staff. Nobody will listen to Casey as he tries to point out the transformations taking place: The other kids dismiss him, as they always have, and his parents suspect it's just another troublesome phase their son is going through. Casey doesn't know whether to trust his own mind or just relax and go with the majority, who think everything is normal. After all, the faculty was always pretty weird, and what teenager doesn't sometimes see grownups as possessed?
Wood is a veteran of 14 movies; he is remembered for his roles in The War, The Good Son, Avalon, Radio Flyer, The Adevntures of Huck Finn, and, most recently, outrunning a massive tidal wave in the summer sci-fi drama Deep Impact. But he sees his Faculty experience as something special. "The big highlight of this movie is working with Robert," he says of the filmmaker whose credits include Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn. "He's truly one of the greatest directors I've worked with. I've worked with a lot of different filmmakers- Barry Levinson, Rob Reiner, Mimi Leder, Ang Lee-but if I had to work with one director consistenly, I'd work with Robert. I trust him so completely. He makes the set a lot of fun."
While the central horror of The Faculty is its "Inavasion of the Body Snatchers in high school" concept, the film also concerns young people struggling teen angst. However Herrington High does have a cool couple who appear to fear nothing-Delilah and Stan, the cheerleader and the quarterback. Delilah is played by Jordana Brewster, from CBS's daytime serial As the World Turns, who finds being cast as a coldhearted super-babe to be "Heaven! This movie is the best experience of my life so far." Stan is portrayed by Shawn Hatosy, who has appeared in The Postman with Kevin Costner and In & Out with Kevin Kline. The role appealed to him because of "the arrogance and confidence of the guy at school who everybody adores. It's an interesting role to play, someone who appears to be so comfortable in his own shoes-but really isn't. Stan actually hates the fact that everybody gives him all these accolades for, you know, throwing a football. He;s sick of just being given things; he wants to work for something."
As the story goes on, Stan finds that he has to work together with other students-different individuals who would normally never ride in the same car-to face a common enemy. They don't know who-or what-the enemy is, but they must band together and help each other survive. "These are six different characters who are thrown together from different directions, and they're all very precise," Hatosy says. You have the captain of the football team, the cool guy stud, the girl from New York who looks like she wants to be living in Greenwich Village and starving, and the dorky kid. That element was fun to do, striking uo these unlikely friendships with each person."
Others in the cast include Josh (Halloween: H20) Hartnett as tall, dark, good-looking Zeke, a rebel with charm who struts the edge of danger. The actor describes Zeke as "into his own thing. He's very independent, but he has some hard lessons to learn." Marybeth, a southern gal awkwardly adjusting to the life in Ohio, is played by Laura Harris, a native of Canada who has appeared on TV series such as The Outer Limits and Sliders, and in the sci-fi feature Habitat. Stokely, who is sort of the female counterpart to Casey-is portrayed by Clea DuVall the "Invisible Girl" from a memorable episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a co-star in the upcoming Johnny Depp sci-fi thriller The Astronaut's Wife.
The screenplay fot The Faculty was written by Kevin Williamson, who scripted the Scream films and I Know What You Did Last Summer, created the hit show Dawson's Creek and wrote and directed the upcoming Killing Mrs. Tingle. Williamson's talent for delivering more than standard scare fare attracted Hatosy. "There are a slew of scripts that come our way, to us young actors, that deal with the horror genre," he says. "It's kind of scary when you get a script like this, because you're like, 'I don't know if I want to be a part of this.' But then I read this one, and it stood out as something that was going to be very special. And I knew with Robert involved, it wouldn't go wrong."
Needless to say, there are plenty of frightening FX involved. "We've already done a lot of that stuff," Wood reports, "reacting to things that aren't there. We all know what we're supposed to be looking at; we've seen sketches and mockups. But we've had to react to things that will be completely computer-generated, and that's pretty new to me. I mean, I did Deep Impact, which had a lot of effects like that, but this has much more." There are also a number of gruesome on-set FX created by the KNB EFX Group to contend with. "There's definitely going to be a gore factor," Wood promises, "which is new. I've never dealt with that before, so it's exciting."
So exciting, in fact, that it has helped inspire Wood in his ambitions to move from acting to directing. "Oh yeah," he says, "that's something I see myself moving into in the near future. Behind the camera."
"He asked me what camera I used on (my first film) El Mariachi," Rodriguez chimes in, "so I have a feeling he's about to go buy something."
"I want to do that soon," Wood continues. "Get a camera and just start shooting. I've been in the business for nine years, and every film I've worked on, I've watched. I'm perceptive, and I've always been fascinated by filmmaking in general, so it's definitely something I want to try out. I just love the process."
With such ambitions brewing in his mind, Wood has come to feel that Rodriguez is not only a good director but also a valuable teacher. "His strong point is storytelling, and he's very good with visuals," the young actor says. "He operates the camera, which is so cool-and he edits too."
The end result, he believes, will be the kind of movie that will likely become a favorite among this magazine's readers. "It's suspenseful and scary, and it's all about kids," Wood says. "Teenagers are going to love it because it's about high school, and the alienation that happens there. It's the transition period, which is the most frightening time of anyone's life."
