The Faculty


This review is sponsored by
BUY IT

Details At A Glance

General
Extras
Category Science Fiction/Horror Theatrical Trailer(s) Yes, 1 - 1.78:1. 16x9 Enhanced, Dolby Digital 2.0
Rating Other Trailer(s) Yes, 2 - Dolby Digital Rain; Deep Blue Sea Teaser Trailer (1.78:1, 16x9 Enhanced, Dolby Digital 2.0)
Year Released 1998 Commentary Tracks None
Running Time 100::21 Minutes
(Not 104 Minutes as per packaging)
Other Extras Featurette - On The Set (2:01)
Cast & Crew Interviews
RSDL/Flipper No/No
Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region 4 Director Robert Rodriguez
Studio
Distributor
Dimension Films
Roadshow Home Entertainment
Starring Jordana Brewster
Clea DuVall
Laura Harris
Josh Hartnett
Shawn Hatosy
Famke Janssen
Piper Laurie
Bebe Neuwirth
Robert Patrick
Usher Raymond
Jon Stewart
Elijah Wood
Case Brackley
RRP $34.95 Music Marco Beltrami
 
 
Video
Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None MPEG None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.78:1 Dolby Digital 5.1
16x9 Enhancement
Soundtrack Languages English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 448Kb/s)
English (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio 1.85:1
Miscellaneous
Macrovision ? Smoking No
Subtitles None Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

Plot Synopsis

    My first impressions of this film were clashing contradictions of each other, and my subsequent feelings about the film are no different after this viewing. To tell you the truth, my first real impression of this film was that it was a piece of crap that was not worthy of my time. This impression stemmed from the small blurb on the advertisements that proudly proclaimed that this film boasted a contemporary soundtrack featuring such mobs as The Offspring, Garbage (this is a very appropriate name for an MTV-sanctioned band if you ask me), and Oasis. However, the fact that the film was directed by a certain Robert Rodriguez, the man who brought us such triumphs of creative direction as El Mariachi, gave me some reason to give this film the benefit of the doubt. To be perfectly honest, I am still in two minds about the plot of this film. On one hand, I'd like to be able to say that it is a thrilling ride that will keep you happy if you sit back and relax. However, there are plot holes in this film that you could drive a combat helicopter through, and a few of them are in fact essential to the overall story. Just to name the worst instance, a diuretic does not cause flesh to melt, Kevin Williamson (he's the screenwriter), and I should know, given the amount of one particular diuretic I've put through my body. This is by far the most unbelievable detail I've ever seen in a film of this kind: imagine that your planet is slowly being taken over by a race of alien creatures who are extremely dependent on water. Do you honestly expect to be able to stop them with a batch of caffeine pills? [Ed. Perhaps you could try yodelling...] Maybe I am too fussy, but I like my disbelief to be suspended, not encouraged.

    Anyway, the story begins with a football coach by the name of Willis (Robert Patrick, and boy, has his career gone downhill) being accosted by an unspecified person who, as we are expected to assume, is hosting an alien parasite. This alien parasite is rather nasty, and basically wants to control humans so that it can drain them of all the fluid in their body, which leads to another wide plot hole which I won't get into for fear of spoiling the film too much. The next thing you know, the entire faculty of the local high school has been taken over by the alien parasite, and it is up to a bunch of ragtag students comprised of a bunch of unknown actors to stop them from spreading outside the school's boundaries. Okay, so the plot is a very thin one, and the character development is very minimal, which makes me wonder exactly where that magic Robert Rodriguez touch disappeared to once the act of introducing the principal characters was over. In case you're curious, the reason why I haven't launched into a running description of the characters in this film is because they are completely unmemorable, much like the story. The saving grace of the film is quite definitely the special effects, which appeared to take the biggest slice out of the budget. There's very little I can say to spoil this film if you have seen Invasion Of The Body Snatchers or one of its many clones. Suffice it to say that the film has that typical happy ending and everyone walks off into the sunset feeling much happier. This, more than anything, is what left me cold about the plot.

    In case you haven't got the point of my confused and nonplussed rantings yet, it is this: The Faculty is a very ordinary film. If my curious inability to quantify the words to describe the plot doesn't make anything else clear, it should make it perfectly clear that this is a rather ordinary film from start to finish. Not a particularly bad film, just not a particularly good one, either. If you turn off your brain and turn down your expectations, this film will be perfectly enjoyable. For some parts of the film, there is a show of promise, but this is quickly extinguished by a lack of originality on writer Kevin Williamson's part. One relative of mine walked in on the caffeine-sniffing sequence and thought I was watching The Thing for a second there. The director puts up a brave fight, but eventually the film falls under the weight of having nothing new to offer the viewer.

Transfer Quality

Video

    A note to Roadshow Home Entertainment: the use of RSDL formatting does wonders for the video quality of a DVD. Please make use of it more often, because when a hundred-minute film is crammed onto a single layer with three trailers and interview segments, something has to give. The bit-rate of the main feature and most of the extras consistently hovers around 5 Mb/s, with the sequences involving water given a bit-rate of around 9 Mb/s or thereabouts. While most of the feature doesn't have much of a problem with this, there is the occasional moment when an extra layer of storage space would have really come in handy, particularly very early on in the film. The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (for heaven's sake, why is this being inflicted upon 1.85:1 films?), and it is 16x9 Enhanced. The sharpness of the foreground in this picture is impeccable, but the backgrounds frequently lose a lot in the translation to our beloved format. Shadow detail is as clear as you would expect from a two-year old (at most) film, although there are occasions when it threatened to fall back into the murkiness consistent with older films.

    Colour saturation was vivid and bright, although there were some points early in the film where oversaturation became apparent, especially the first shots of Robert Patrick that occur in the film. His skin tones were way off-balance, especially given that there basically is no variation in his normal skin tone if you look at various shots of him in other films. From looking at the skin tones of other actors such as Salma Hayek throughout the film, I have come to the conclusion that the red level was set too high during this film, although whether this is a result of the transfer or part of the original photography is not clear. In contrast, the skin tones of other actors whom I do not recognize seem somewhat undersaturated. The contrast of having some actors appear pallid while others appeared to have a perpetual blush was somewhat rattling.

    No MPEG artefacts were present in the transfer, which is strange when you consider how hard the total amount of graphic-accompanied information and video on the disc would have pushed the compression. The absence of a second layer on the disc is barely noticed, which is a credit to whomever was in charge of the DVD authoring process. Film-to-video artefacts were more or less non-existent, although were moments here and there when they made their presence known, such as the moiré effect on a panning shot of a computer. If any aliasing took place during the main feature, it was not noticed. Film artefacts consisted of very occasional, but noticeable black flecks in the picture. Their presence is highlighted mainly by the fact that they are very occasional, and occur less than half a dozen times in the film.

    The subtitles are completely non-existent. While this might save a minimal amount of space on the disc, it is an omission that I found somewhat sad because of the absence of novelties such as seeing how the dialogue might be rendered in Chinese. Still, given that this disc is Region 4 only, I guess the only people who will notice the absence of subtitles on this disc would be Mexicans, and I doubt that Roadshow Home Entertainment would distribute the disc to them.

Audio

    While the video transfer suffers some minor problems as the result of the film being compressed onto one layer, the audio quality is very good indeed, although it falls short of being reference quality by just a couple of small points. The only available language on the disc is English, presented in two formats: Dolby Digital 5.1, and Dolby Digital with surround encoding. Being the completist over-doer that I like to think I am, I listened to both audio tracks, but mainly the 5.1 track, and the difference between the two is only just barely noticeable with the more precise placement of ambient sounds in the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. Dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times, with the only exception being the thankfully few lines spoken by Salma Hayek.

    The dialogue sounds as if it has been mixed a few decibels above the rest of the soundtrack, which improves clarity quite a lot. This is an excellent move on the part of the filmmakers, or whomever else was responsible for the sound on this film. This leads me to a new theory about the quality of audio transfers that could be described as the idea that the quality of the dialogue in a film is inversely proportional to the ease with which it can all be heard. The WaterBoy is solid proof that this theory is sound because the dialogue that one has the most difficulty understanding is often the funniest. In The Faculty, every single word can be heard with ease. Audio sync was a minor problem at times, with a very occasional loss in the correlation between sound and movement. However, this was very occasional, and so minor as to only be noticeable when I played the sound through the television and the amplifier at the same time. The usual message of caution about playing Roadshow Home Entertainment discs with Pioneer players still applies, unfortunately.

    The contemporary music on this DVD was unremarkable except for an absolute butchery of Pink Floyd's signature song The Wall. I have never thought very much of this song, so any rendering of it that makes me like it less is bound to get a slamming from me. As I said, the music of this film mostly consists of some of the usual MTV-sanctioned crud, but some score music by Marco Beltrami accompanied the more dramatic moments of the film. Overall, I'd say the music of the film suited the visuals when the score music was out in force, but the contemporary music is certainly not the best collection ever assembled to accompany a film by Robert Rodriguez. If you're looking for soundtracks, stick with From Dusk Till Dawn or Desperado.

    The surround presence was fairly immersive for most of the film, with ambient sounds being poured throughout the sound channels. The rear and centre channels basically supported the sounds that were put into the left and right channels, with a fair amount of division between each channel. The most obvious sound effects to be placed in the rear channels were announcements over the school's PA system, splashes in a pool, and some sneak attacks. The full Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is certainly very supportive of the visuals, and adds quite a lot to the experience of this particular film. The subwoofer was used occasionally to support bass-heavy effects in the overall soundfield and some of the music. Overall, it was well-integrated into the sound mix, although the rarity of its use meant that it became fairly conspicuous at times.

Extras

    The most interesting extra on this film would be the Dolby Digital Rain trailer, which I hadn't seen before.

Menu

    The menu is loosely themed around the film, and it is 16x9 Enhanced. Some Dolby Digital 2.0 audio accompanies the main menu and the special features menu, but otherwise the film does not do much to keep one interested. Like most Roadshow Home Entertainment menus, it is somewhat counter-intuitive to navigate.

Theatrical Trailer

    The theatrical trailer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, complete with 16x9 Enhancement and Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. It is interesting to note that this trailer makes use of footage from some other films that Kevin Williamson wrote and Robert Rodriguez directed. The video quality of this trailer is somewhat on the ugly side, although it is much better than the trailers for some other films that I won't mention.

Featurette - On The Set

    Clocking in at just over two minutes, this featurette is comprised of unannotated footage of Robert Rodriguez shooting various sequences in the film and talking with the actors. It is most certainly not a documentary, and it is certainly nothing to really get excited about.

Cast & Crew Interviews

    Interviews with Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Williamson, Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Josh Hartnett, and Salma Hayek. In typical Roadshow Home Entertainment style, the interviews are presented as a list of topics linked to footage of the subject speaking. If you click on the first of the topics, the rest will be played back in sequence anyway. This arrangement should be ditched in favour of putting in a series of real interviews.

Teaser Trailer - Deep Blue Sea

    This option is hidden, and is accessed by scrolling down to the last blood-dot on the main menu with your remote control. It is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, with 16x9 Enhancement and Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. Like the theatrical trailer for The Faculty, the picture quality is a little bit on the mediocre side.

R4 vs R1

    In Region 1, this disc is distributed by Buena Vista. Need I say any more?

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;     There's no contest here. Region 4 is the version to go for.

Summary

    The Faculty is an enjoyable but rather forgettable film presented on a very good DVD.

    The video quality is just short of reference material.

    The audio quality is excellent, bordering on reference material.

    The extras are average.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall
© Dean McIntosh (my bio sucks... read it anyway)
March 16, 2000 
Review Equipment
   
DVD Toshiba SD-2109, using S-video output
Display Samsung CS-823AMF (80 cm), 16:9 mode/4:3 mode, using S-video input
Audio Decoder Built In (Amplifier)
Amplification Sony STR-DE835
Speakers Panasonic S-J1500D Front Speakers, Sharp CP-303A Back Speakers, Philips FB206WC Centre Speaker, JBL Digital 10 Subwoofer