Review of The Faculty

It wasn't a blockbuster hit, but The Faculty was a better movie than Men in Black, Independence Day or any the recent alien films on video. And the movie's got a lot to offer to roleplayers as well.

Set in an Ohio suburban high school, the story revolves around six students who discover their school is being taken over by alien parasites that use humans as hosts. Given several warning signs and being deviant loner types who are paranoid anyhow, the students reluctantly band together to escape and discover what's going on. After discovering that the aliens are primarily water-dependent, they use a dehydrating homemade drug to kill the parasites and identify the humans among them.

This movie would make a good example of an RPG for several reasons. First of all, the group of conflicting characters is brought together believably, and manage to stay together without suddenly becoming best friends. The characters themselves are interesting and don't fit any sort of teenage stereotypes easily. One's a fifth year high school student and the school's black market, but is also apparently a genius. Another's an anti-social goth who secretly wants friends and has a crush on the quarterback (this side of her could break the stereotype so many gothic type characters, like those in Vampire, seem to fall under.) The aforementioned quarterback decides to quit at the beginning of the movie because he wants to be recognized for his academic merits, something that earns him ridicule from the team and his girlfriend.

The story gives up any pretensions of originality, frequently making references to alien movies and classic science fiction novels like Robert Heinlein's The Puppetmasters. In fact, the characters get to use this knowledge to their advantage to defeat the alien. I like the idea of an actual alien being something a science fiction writer had already thought of, and the use of this knowledge is not unlike a player-character using folklore he'd heard beforehand. The characters don't just blow the aliens apart, as in other movies, but actually use their minds and collective knowledge to defeat them.

If you don't see the relevance of THAT to your rpg, quit and get a Playstation. Best of all, the movie has a sense of humor about itself, not unlike Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the show, not the movie) and doesn't try to add any kind of mocking seriousness to an admitedly old plotline. I can't speak for anyone else, but I get tired of being in common rpg scenarios and being expected to treat it as being intense.

So, for a fun science fiction movie that defies stereotypes and can add to your campaign, watch The Faculty. I promise it's at least as useful as the b-movies that everyone keeps recommending for gamers.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)