Quick Movie Review: The Faculty (1998)

Think of The Faculty as an adaptation of sorts. A movie where aliens somehow take over the humans' bodies, one by one, until all of them are infected. The film recognizes that the premise is a lot like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Puppet Masters, but this particular rendition is both scary and cool. And perfectly captures the spirit of teen America in 1998.

Teachers at an Ohio high school start acting weirder than normal. And a hodgepodge Breakfast Club-like group of kids discover that their behavior might be due to some weird alien parasite. They work together to solve the mystery, where they figure out they must hunt down the alien queen and kill it so the school will go back to normal.

The Faculty goes deeper than just a basic invasion. There's an obvious motive for the aliens, and the psyches of the students are discovered as well. It's not the first late-90s film to be obsessed with the self-destruction of teen America, but this time that theme coincides with an alien invasion. 

For the most part the characters walk the fine line of realistic and what we've been convinced is realistic by movies and TV. But there's one scene with Elijah Wood's character, Casey, where his parents act so unbelievably unrealistic that, for a second, it takes you out of the movie. But only because its own standards for realism within the film universe have already been established by this point.

The twist at the end may be a little predictable for anyone paying attention, but along the way the story gives you a couple smaller twists that you really don't see coming.

The Faculty is a really fun and exciting experience that you can rewatch over and over again. The cast is charismatic and the pace never slows down for you to over-think things too much. For a movie that has something to say about the teen psyche, it just as easily knows how to grab their attention and distract them for a little while. And us, too, in the process.

Twizard Rating: 95

Quick Movie Review: The Last Witch Hunter (2015)

Vin Diesel's charisma may not be enough to save a movie that is this pedestrian. A rough script is one thing--I men, Diesel has been known to take a couple--but at it's best it's just a stylistic exposition with too many rules built into the film universe.

Full of plot holes and convoluted details is The Last Witch Hunter, a tale about a man (Diesel) cursed with immortality by a witch in the middle ages, only to ward off the same evil 800 years later in New York City.

I applaud the film for a couple of clever plot twists that keep the audience involved and attentive, but I constantly feel like I'm playing catchup with everything else. It will give us a motif or a totem to remember early on and then refer to it much later, after not mentioning it in between, assuming that we remember its significance. More or less, the plot is simple enough to follow. But the confusing details surrounding the events feel included to stretch out the premise.

The Last Witch Hunter is attractive stylistically as it utilizes some cool props and spells, but the use of CGI--albeit few and far between--reminds us that we're watching a movie.

The film tries creating depth for our lead character by showing us flashbacks of his wife and child. But the only thing is they serve no purpose to the story--literally. It's forced and keeps the movie untrue to itself, reminding us even more how little depth he has. We really just want to see Diesel go around hunting witches--as the title describes.

Another sign of forced-depth is the use of trite dialogue that merely sounds good in the moment, while having no real meaning or relevance to the premise.

The Last Witch Hunter isn't a boring movie at all--perhaps is strongest trait--but after it's finished we long for a better understanding of what we just watched.

Twizard Rating: 69