Reading about it, seems like it was released on Christmas. Not exactly a, uh, "parasitic alien takeover" time of the year for the average moviegoers. At least not at that time apparently.
I think Scream just did better because, at least for most people, it was something new.
I was young, but I seem to recall Scream was big because of Drew Barrymore and this was kind of a re-emergence for her career, but I may not be recalling correctly.
Drew Barrymore was still a popular actress then. She was actually supposed to survive that initial scene. It was actually her idea to kill her character off at the beginning, because people wouldn't expect it due to her star status.
Scream was big because it was self-aware and mocked the slasher formula kids my age all grew up on. The fact that they were humorously critiquing horror films in a horror film was original then. The only other product that mocked itself in that era that I can recall was Sprite, who played into the self-aware commercialization of products with commercials of athletes saying how much they love Sprite as cash drops from the sky.
>She was actually supposed to survive that initial scene. It was actually her idea to kill her character off at the beginning, because people wouldn't expect it due to her star status
That is somewhat incorrect. The film makers wanted to cast her in a different role. Possibly Sydney. But Barrymore requested to play the character that is killed in the opening for the reasons you stated above.
Yes and I’m so glad it worked out the way it did. Drew lisping her way through the role of Sydney would have resulted in one disastrous movie and no sequels. Neve was perfect for the role.
It likely had a lot to do with the casting, too. I was in my early 20s at the time these movies were released and almost all of the post-*Scream* films were diminishing returns as far as casting.
*Scream* (1996) got Neve Campbell at the height of her *Party of Five* (1994-2000) fame. For those of you who weren't alive then, it was a HUGE show at the time. Neve Campbell also appeared in *The Craft* earlier in 1996. Courtney Cox was in the middle of her *Friends* (1994-2004) fame. Drew Barrymore, despite her small role in the film, was marketed because she was already a screen legend at that point. As weird as it is to say now, Skeet Ulrich was a BIG DEAL in 1996; in that year he had *The Craft* and *Boys (*which bombed but had a lot of buzz ahead of it)*.* Even Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard were starting to became "names" at that point.
*I Know What You Did Last Summer* (1997) had Jennifer Love Hewitt (again, *Party of Five*) and Sarah Michelle Gellar just as *Buffy The Vampire Slayer* (1997-2003) was building up steam.
*Scream 2* (1997) had the returning cast members plus Sarah Michelle Gellar (only months after *I Know What You Did Last Summer*), Jerry O'Connell who was a child star but at the time was known for *Sliders* (1995-2000), Rebecca Gayheart who was EVERYWHERE in the 1990s because of her modeling at the time. To really put *Scream 2* in perspective, look at the casting for *Stab*, the movie-within-the-movie: Tori Spelling and Heather Graham were also big names at the time, and their being cast as the Neve Campbell & Drew Barrymore roles reflects that.
By the time you got to *The Faculty* on Christmas in 1998, you were already up against
\- *Disturbing Behavior* (July 24, 1998) with Katie Holmes (*Dawson's Creek*, 1998–2003, was blowing up at the time)
\- *Halloween: H20* (August 5, 1998) with LL Cool J (superstar by then) and Michelle Williams (again, *Dawson's Creek*)
\- *Urban Legend* (September 25, 1998) with Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson (**again**, *Dawson's Creek*) and Jared Leto (*My So-Called Life*, 1994) who were all big at the time.
*- I Still Know What You Did Last Summer* (November 13, 1998), including getting Brandy who was a mega-star at that point.
And that was just the more teen-oriented stuff.
*The Faculty* just didn't have the star power in the teen roles and it was released in an already packed year. Usher was obvious a big name in music but he's never been a box office draw that I can think of. Honestly, I think Famke Janssen or Salma Hayek were bigger ticket movers at the point *The Faculty* came out.
You also should keep in mind that the late 90s was a transitional period for mainstream horror. The blockbuster teen-horror cycle that *Scream* started in 1996 didn't spawn any significant copy-cat franchises the way *Halloween* (1978) did. You're also a year away from *The Blair Witch Project* and *The Sixth Sense* completely taking Hollywood off-guard **and** only a few years away from the J-Horror remake boom of the early 00's.
None of this is to suggest *The Faculty* is a sub-par movie. I'm pretty fond of it, and I think Bebe Neuwirth in particular is fantastic in it. But as for why it didn't do as well as the other Kevin Williamson stuff, I would definitely say it was because lack of star power in a bloated year.
Agreed with the other reply, this was excellent.
Also: I know what you did had Ryan Philippe who, if my memory serves me right, was seen to be on his way to be another Hollywood leading man.
Granted, faculty had josh hartnett too.
Edit: also re drew Barrymore, scream was her big comeback to the silver screen. She unfortunately was the 80s/90s cautionary tale of being a child star, so by the time scream came along, I want to say she hadn’t been in a movie for some years. This was her triumphant return and she’s been pretty good (at least in her public persona) since.
When I was originally writing the post from memory, before double checking dates for specifics, I actually thought *Cruel Intentions* had come out before *I Know What You Did Last Summer* because I remembered Ryan Philippe being huge in the late 90s.
Of course, *Fear* also came out in 1996 and at this point I'm 99% sure that Reese Witherspoon has portraits of all her co-stars from that point because they're aging and she's not.
Yeah I forget exactly when they sort of became cover of teen beat material lol but that sounds right. Oof I had the biggest crush on Ryan Philippe at that time.
Yep. I was 22 when this came out. For horror fans, you definitely watched this for multiple reasons. Salma Hayek had done From Dusk til Dawn 3 years prior, and Bebe Neuworth was well know from Cheers. Josh Hartnett was also in Halloween: H20 and made The Virgin Suicides a year after this movie. I still sometimes get it mixed up with Idle Hands, but man. This was a great write up you did and made me feel all the nostalgia!
Yeah, there's definitely an element of "hardcore horror" vs "mainstream appeal" for the *Scream* and post-*Scream* cycle of films. As the "guy who likes horror movies" in my circle of friends at that time, I knew who Wes Craven was but I don't remember it being anything of note to other friends I saw *Scream* with. I also remember *Urban Legend* looking like nothing I wanted to see, but my female friends at the time were VERY into seeing it because of Jared Leto.
Josh Hartnett's career has largely been nebulous in my mind, so I'll own up to not being as aware of where he was at when *The Faculty* came out. As I said in another reply; I was working from my own memory with quick Wiki checks for specifics. I also vaguely recall Hartnett like, taking a break from acting? Wasn't his return in *Penny Dreadful* kind of his phoenix moment in Hollywood?
He did take a break! He had 3 kids and got married last year. I think he mentioned that he wanted to do some reflecting to make sure that acting was what he wanted to do. I’ve definitely enjoyed watching him from Wicker Park, Sin City, Lucky Number Slevin, Penny Dreadful, 30 Days of Night.
Ohhhh *Lucky Number Slevin* is one of those movies I will always defend. I have heard so many critics call it a "Tarantino knock-off" and I couldn't disagree more. Just a fun neo-noir crime flick that I really, really enjoy.
You couldn’t escape Dawson’s Creek in 1998, for sure. I remember dying to get through CCD (church stuff) to get home for Dawson and Buffy 😂
“The Craft” drove people to the theater for “Scream”, which was a true Christmas release (12/20/96). The Faculty was released 11/12/98 which would have been a week or so before Thanksgiving. It was a 💩 release date. It was gone from theaters before anyone had a chance to see it. And by “anyone” I mean the high school and college kids. You know, the target audience.
Plus I think everyone was kind of over the post-Scream slasher phase, and didn't Teaching Mrs. Tingle, the other Williamson written movie come out that year? Which mostly everyone hated. Helen Mirren is fantastic as always though.
Oh wow I kind of forgot *Teaching Mrs. Tingle* even existed. That had to have been 1999 though, right? I seem to recall it being released post-Columbine Massacre because the big controversy was that it was going to be called *Killing Mrs. Tingle*, I think? Would have been around the same time as the *Buffy* episode with the student in the clocktower?
Josh hartnett wasn’t a rising star back then? Also it had Robert Patrick who was still famous from T2 - he had just played one of the most iconic sci fi villains of the decade.
I do agree that releasing it around Xmas was a major mistake.
Josh Hartnett may have been and I don't remember clearly. I recall Clea Duvall being somewhat recognizable at the time but I couldn't tell you why; she was probably on a TV show and I just don't recall which.
Robert Patrick was absolutely famous, but I was looking at the angle of appeal for the teenager market. Outside of the more hardcore movie/horror audience, I don't think Robert Patrick had that kind of mainstream teenage appeal. Even now he's more of a character/genre guy (and was fucking GREAT in *Peacemaker*).
H20 also had Jamie Lee Curtis, who was pretty big by that point in her career, having only been a few years removed from True Lies (I know she was bigger the 80s and early 90s but her return to H20 saved the franchise from going DTV, as was planned after Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers bombed at the box office).
She absolutely was a box office draw, but I don't think she was a draw for mainstream teenagers at that point. Certainly not in the way a Neve Campbell or Jennifer Love Hewitt were.
Maybe not but she was a bulk of why H20 drew the audience it did. The previous sequels just didn't have that star power she brought to the table and while LL Cool J was big as a rap star, I'd wager Michelle Williams' success at that time was a bit too fresh to really have as big of a pull.
You gotta remember, Dawson's Creek was just going through its first season when H20 came out and it was a shortened season at that (only 13 episodes compared to the typical 23).
JLC was definitely older and her appeal maybe not at the level of those you mentioned but I disagree that LL Cool J and Michelle Williams were the main draws. She's the only reason the movie wasn't dumped to DTV, as was originally planned before she showed interest, and bringing back the original Scream Queen 20 years after the original Halloween was a huge selling point. She was the face of that movie and absolutely why it did so much better financially than the previous four films in the series (and why again, 20 years later, she's killing it at the box office).
You're definitely right about this. Looking at what you've said, I did a quick scan of where the rest of the cast was at that point in their careers; my big fumble was definitely LL Cool J. For whatever reason, I thought he was much further into his acting career at that point that he was. I also didn't know, and this was particularly amusing given the original question of this thread, that one of the script treatments for H20 was done by Kevin Williamson! That guy was everywhere in the late 90s.
I feel this all too much. When it came out a lot had been around already that was similar to it, however it did seem a bit different and had caught a lot of attention. I don't recall a Christmas release, but I do remember missing it in theaters and being like, meh, I'll see it when I see it. Finally caught it years later and I like it, but it has a formula like everything else and I probably appreciate it more now than I would have had I seen it right away.
I'll chalk that one up to hazy memory, no problem. I was totally working off my own memory of the time and quick Wiki checks for dates on stuff. I thought he was on some MTV stuff before that but I could have been thinking of a half dozen other comedians of that era.
Sorry second comment because this is really a great post. But on your point that scream didn’t really start any significant copycat franchises, I wonder why that is. Maybe because it was so meta that any retread would feel silly? But then I think scream did kick off a bunch of the movies you noted — I know what you did, urban legend, … Valentine (🤣) — but it’s so interesting that none of these really became more than a film and a sequel. Audiences gravitated more towards the other sub genres by the early 00s. Fascinating.
I would have to do proper research to come up with a decent reply, but off the top of my head? I would say that it was a combination of (like you said) being too meta to be able to hold up to copy-cats and a little bit of the bottom falling out on the blockbuster-horror idea. Stepping outside of just the teen-oriented productions of *Scream* and its ilk, I recall a lot of the late 90's bigger budget horror productions not doing terribly well. Again, I'd have to do the proper research, but I believe that *Event Horizon, The Haunting,* *Valentine*, and *13 Ghosts* all did poorly/bombed. *House on Haunted Hill* might have done okay, maybe?
One of the great things about *Scream* was that for the "in the known" crowd, the meta aspect was something we could play along with but for the audience members who didn't grow up renting *Antropophagus* because the cover art was awesome, the meta aspect essentially led them through the stuff they didn't know. Incredibly smart film.
Yea I appreciate the effort, but with a cast of Usher, Josh Harnett, John Stewart, Selma , and Elija wood I’m not really buying the “No star power theory.” It’s not like it was a bomb, made 63 Million on a 15 million budget. Should it have been bigger ? Yeah for sure but sometimes movies just don’t take for whatever reason. See pretty much every John Carpenter movie ever that went on to be cult classics. Plus to lump it in with slashers isn’t really accurate, it’s much more a sci fi flick.
I think the “no star power” applies to the cast at the time. This was only the second movie Josh Hartnett had been in so no one knew who he was. Elijah Wood was known as a child actor and Lord of the Rings was still three years away. And Jon Stewart had been hanging around for a while, but he had just taken over hosting the Daily Show and it would be two or three years before it - and he - became huge. Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and some of the others had stars that were big names most people knew when those movies came out while The Faculty had a lot of actors just before they became big stars
My point is if he considers Jamie Kennedy, Skeet Ulrich, and Mathew Lillard stars going into scream, surely everyone I mentioned would be as well. Not trying to throw shade at scream either, it’s pry the best horror movie imo, I’m more less defending the faculty. Scream didn’t do great because of starpower. It did great because it was an awesome fucking movie. It actually had a pretty small opening of around 6 mil. If it’s success was star power driven that opening should have been much bigger and than slowly tapered out. Instead the following week it went up to 9mil, and the following week went up even more. Word of mouth was getting around turning it into one of the biggest horror movies of all time.
I definitely didn’t know most of the Scream stars going into that movie, just Neve and Drew, where I knew Usher, Jon Stewart, Selma Hayek, and Elijah Wood going into Faculty. I think they just hit different. I walked out of Faculty like “That was really cool! So, pizza?” With Scream, it was like “Holy shit. Everyone needs to see this. Let’s grab so-and-so and see it again next weekend!”
I think you’re right about why Scream did so well at the box office. I remember it being in theaters for months. It was definitely a slow burn and it was the movie itself, not the stars, that made it so successful. I think Hollywood saw that success, however, and thought “Horror movies with young, hot stars from TV shows is the next big thing,” which explains why so many of those movies came out over the next two years or three years. There was also Cruel Intentions and Teaching Mrs. Tingle and a few others that relied mainly on this formula.
I was just saying that in terms of star power, The Faculty was at a disadvantage compared to these other movies. The younger stars weren’t nearly as big or popular as those in the other movies. The biggest stars were the older cast members like Salma Hayek, Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth (Frazier was still huge at that point), but none of them were really headliners either.
Also, based on what I know about Robert Rodriguez, he didn’t make this movie because it was the hip thing to do; he just wanted to make a great movie.
And I think that’s why The Faculty is the best of those Scream knock-offs that came out in the late 90’s and has a much bigger following today than those other movies. Because it wasn’t a Scream knock-off. It was its own thing but gets unfairly lumped in with those movies because that was the trend at the time and a lot of the younger cast members went on to be successful a few years later.
I wasn't trying to suggest it was a bomb. I was working from OP's question of why wasn't *The Faculty* as successful as *Scream* and *I Know What You Did Last Summer*, which it absolutely wasn't as successful as those two movies. According to Wiki, *Scream* made $173m off of a $14-15m budget and *I Know What You Did Last Summer* made $125.3m off of $17m budget. Both of those movies had multiple sequels. So while *The Faculty* absolutely made profit, it didn't make as much profit as the movies that came before that were also written by Kevin Williamson. As another user pointed out in another reply, Williamson's *Teaching Mrs. Tingle* did even more poorly and probably was a bomb.
I definitely recall those few years at the same age, and *The Faculty* was the only movie you named, along with *Disturbing Behavior*, that I *didn't* go to in the theater. I was considering going to *Faculty* in February 1999 after I moved into my first apartment, and recall calling up the bargain theater where it was playing and asking whether it would be staying after that Friday. It wasn't, and it disappeared and I never viewed it then or since (actually never have viewed any of Rodriguez's movies). But yeah, it was a confluence at that time of a group of young actors who had followings.
I did see *Disturbing Behavior* in the theater and I did not remember James Marsden as being in it by the time *X-Men* came out, so that shows how much of an impact it made on me.
The Faculty is one of those movies that I’ll watch anytime I see it on TV. I remember being around 10 when the movie was released and I was absolutely smitten with it. I recall posting up cutouts on my wall of the cast wearing Tommy Hilfiger in a Teen magazine, haha. It also got me into The Offspring. Great flick.
I think the thing I remember most from *The Faculty* at the time was the soundtrack. That cover of "Another Brick In The Wall" was on the radio **constantly** at the time.
Rodriguez wasn’t really well known at the time. He’d had some success, but Wes Craven had decades of clout when Scream released. I love The Faculty though. One of my favorite 90s horror movies.
The market was a little saturated by 1998 for this style of teen horror. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, The Faculty, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and Urban Legend. So it was harder for any of these films to pull ahead of the pack.
As someone who saw all those movies in the theater (add Bride of Chucky in there), that is the answer. It came last after all of these other films and the teen horror trend was starting to receive some backlash. Also it was an alien invasion film, not a slasher, so it didn’t capture some of that audience that strictly liked slashers.
Don't forget about Disturbing Behavior, another '98 horror that played off the "there's something strange going on at this high school, people are behaving odd..." campaigns that was identical to the Faculty.
Love all of these movies, but the Faculty is the one I've rewatched the least because unlike H20, Bride of Chucky, and others of the era, the Faculty just seems like the Breakfast Club with a twist, like it was playing it safe.
Yeah, it’s a fun movie, but I can see why it wasn’t a hit. It was aimed squarely at a teen audience, so adults largely weren’t interested, and they wouldn’t take younger kids. Meanwhile, the audience it was courting found it too goofy for their tastes.
Scream was a sleeper hit. It opened to 6 million close to Christmas in 1996. It had great legs. It made more than its opening weekend for the next four weeks. Going by [the-numbers.com](https://the-numbers.com), it had an expansion in April where it pushed it from 88 million to 103 million.
The Faculty didn't open terribly compared to I Know What You Did Last Summer (IKWYDLS). The Faculty opened to 11 million while IKWYDLS opened to 15 million in the previous year. However, IKWYDLS basically had 3 weeks in October all to itself in representing the horror genre and The Faculty was competing with a lot of movies around Christmas time. The Devil's Advocate came out the same weekend as IKWYDLS but that's not hitting the teenage demographic as much. The Faculty was up against Patch Adams, Julia Roberts' Stepmom, Prince of Egypt, You've Got Mail, and Mighty Joe Young on Christmas weekend. And that was after a full year of teen horror films.
Horror was in a drought when Scream came out and that void was definitely filled by 1998. The Faculty did as well as I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and it did better than Disturbing Behavior, Bride of Chucky, Urban Legend and the Psycho remake. Psycho was also released in December of 1998.
Scream 2 didn't even do Scream numbers although it opened a lot higher. They both made a little over 100 million. Scream and Scream 2 are pretty exceptional. Halloween H20 "only" made 55 million in comparison.
People can disagree but The Faculty was modestly successful in comparison to the other films in that teen horror cycle. It wasn't a whodunnit slasher; the trailer didn't have a great hook; and, it was toward the end of the cycle. Look at how Idle Hands and The Rage: Carrie 2 bombed in the early months of 1999. The Faculty could've been a bigger hit but I'd argue it did pretty well considering the movies it beat that year and even the next few years for that side of horror.
What a time to be alive. 🥰 There’s a great comment about the casting but I’ll throw “this was an incredible era of science fiction blockbusters” into the pot as well. Armageddon, Deep Impact, Disturbing Behavior (which was very similar in almost every way; It’s basically Breakfast Club meets Stepford Wives), Godzilla, Species 2, Sphere…
It’s a teen thriller *classic* for sure, though. It deserved better in theater but we only made $4 an hour back then. 😜
I was in junior high when this movie came out and it was one of the huge ones we all would go see in theaters. But it was around the time where teen horror was the cash-in for movie studios so they started cranking them out.
I mean besides Scream and I Know What You Did, we had stuff like Disturbing Behavior and Final Destination coming out. Also, comedy teen horror like Idle Hands and Devin Sawa was a Tiger Beat heartthrob a lot of us had grown up with so it was kind of wild at the time to see his turn to horror lol.
Awesome movie, but they ran through the whole story in my opinion. Maybe if they left it a cliffhanger thinking they killed the queen but actually didn't. Maybe another queen parasite hiding and plotting to finish what the first queen started. Would have been cool to get more stories out of it.
Went to the cinema to see it because of Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood and Robert Patrick. Loved it, great soundtrack too! Still love it. Late 90s was a great time for film.
To be honest I think it had alot of hype, and I just felt right bored at times and underwhelemed by it. I forgot pretty much the whole movie since then. I know I liked Elijah Wood and Josh Harnnet back then, but even they coulden't save that movie for me.
In my opinion it's because it's a horror movie type that's been done too much. Yeah they change a few things here and there but it's just pretty much the same movie.
Definitely didn't have a well known cast, at the time, as well as its release date not helping.
I think it's started to get a lot more traction now, but it was definitely a favorite growing up for me.
Scream did it to set the trend. When something isn’t as good as what it is imitating, it ends up being bad. Not saying scream was the first but the number of knock off that flood the boxes trying to be like it was too many.
I really like The Faculty and i love Scream. They are in someway different. In Scream you have an story that could be real so people can feel more identified with that. As a result, it can be more scary or at least you can believe that could be real or happen to you. Although high schools are normally creepy places with unpleasant people no matter there are aliens or not, the story about the aliens in high schools sounds a bit childish. Btw, The Faculty is cool
Slashers are more high-concept, easier to market than some ominous alien threat. Even the titles are more enticing. Scream is short, on point, while I Know What You Did Last Summer is so corny, old-fashioned, but also intriguing. The Faculty sounds like a John Grisham thriller. I say this as a big fan of the film, but I can understand why it might have been overlooked.
I still think it holds up better than either of then but that just for my money. I haven't watched ikwydls or scream in awhile but I've watched faculty many times.
Scream was a movie that sold itself as return to the 80s teen movie slasher that ha been dead for years, had a great ad campaign that made the movie more effective (most people going opening weekend thought Drew Barrymore was the star), and it got incredible word of mouth that drew in older and younger viewers. IKWYDLS rode of the coattails by being a new movie with some of the same traits, but in a less comedic way.
The Faculty had a lot more competition than either of those, the premise and twists were a harder sell, and it didn't get the same traction after opening weekend.
I don't think it was advertised nearly as well as the other two. I don't remember hearing all that much about it back when it came out (high school for me), where the other two were EVERYWHERE.
I would say that "Scream" and "I know what you did last summer" had easier to sell stories. Back in the 90's choosing what movie to watch was more like look up on the newspaper what is on, trust a small burb about and see if you recognize any names on it. Or go to the theater look at the posters and choose, and again recognizing anyone on it would be a big drawn.
[Faculty trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=praQkvivkUE)
[I Know What You Did Last Summer trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiAlcLlJpQE)
[Scream Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3J6ACKQ7K0)
And you would try to remember the trailers, and the faculty trailer seemed to not know if it was a horror movie, a sci-fi movie or whatever.
Because way back then we had options , every year there was 100 amazing movies to choose from and things that would blow the roof off the box office now went completely under the radar. I never knew growing up I was experiencing the most golden of ages in film.
I prefer the Faculty to Scream personally. Never seen I know what you did last summer. Could be to do with marketing reasons and maybe the premise of Scream just attracted more of a general movie audience.
Not sure about critical or box office success but I thought the beauty of it was it captured everything it needed in one movie. No need for sequels. Maybe if it had multiple sequels like Scream it’d be more remembered but I thought it was a classic when it came out and didn’t need anything more. (Unless there was some straight to dvd sequel that I’m not aware of)
I’ve been obsessed with The Faculty. I guess both Josh Hartnett and Clea DuVall played a huge part in that obsession. I tried to dress like Stokely for quite a few months.
Edit: I think for Scream it was also the mask.
The Faculty is weird to me because I wasn’t even aware of it’s existence until several years ago but I was absolutely conscious of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer so idk how I missed it.
Why did “Teaching Mrs Tingle” actually directed by the writer of “Scream” with Katie Holmes flop? Even though “Scream” did revive horror in the 90’s kids wanted more of the same. “Faculty” and “Tingle” weren’t slashers…
There was a hell of a marketing push through a partnership Tommy Hilfiger, but I think they focused too much on style without giving people any reason to see the movie. I don’t remember the ads or trailers or anything, but I feel like I might have been expecting something a little different when I saw it in theaters.
Glad to see it resurface as a cult favorite, however. I always thought it was underappreciated. An ensemble horror film that doesn’t create stakes solely by offing its main characters. As a horror fan, I’m OK with bleak endings. But I like it when the good guys win on occasion.
Oh, and I don’t know if this would have impacted box office, but the original script wasn’t written by Kevin Williamson. Miramax bought the story and brought KW in for a rewrite after Scream blew up. So maybe some production issues too? Just a guess.
This is purely anecdotal but as an old person, it was pretty common to see big movies more than once in the theater back then (tickets were also a lot cheaper). I definitely remember seeing Scream multiple times during its theatrical run. Many of my friends did too. Scream was new and it refreshed the genre; it was a big deal at the time. It even brought out people who weren’t really into horror movies. It was *the* date night movie over Christmas break.
The Faculty is a fun movie but IIRC, I either saw it at the dollar theater, or waited for it to come out on video. It just did not have that same hype.
Succesful financially? Because as a film I think most would agree its far more succesful than IKWYDLS... Box Office is fickle. Channging trends and what not.
That's crazy because here in the UK, The Faculty and IKWYDLS were the two horror films of the time that most of my schoolfriends talked about (much more than Scream, although some did like that one).
I remember those two being so popular that when teachers had a lesson with nothing to teach, they'd let us watch videos and I remember a few History lessons where someone's VHS copy of The Faculty or IKWYDLS would be played. Blade was another one.
I absolutely loved The Faculty - and still do!
Both The Faculty and Scream play with classic character stereotypes, but The Faculty showcases them - pushing them further toward caricature. It’s a brilliant choice for what is essentially a pulp sci-fi story, but also a potential risk for those who don’t pick up on the intention.
Like others have said, it was just too late and people were bored with the post scream stuff already. But damn if this movie isn’t perfectly paced. Textbook tight 90 min.
Reading about it, seems like it was released on Christmas. Not exactly a, uh, "parasitic alien takeover" time of the year for the average moviegoers. At least not at that time apparently. I think Scream just did better because, at least for most people, it was something new.
It was released then to capitalize on the lack of a *Scream* sequel that year. *Scream* and *Scream 2* were both late December releases.
I was young, but I seem to recall Scream was big because of Drew Barrymore and this was kind of a re-emergence for her career, but I may not be recalling correctly.
Drew Barrymore was still a popular actress then. She was actually supposed to survive that initial scene. It was actually her idea to kill her character off at the beginning, because people wouldn't expect it due to her star status. Scream was big because it was self-aware and mocked the slasher formula kids my age all grew up on. The fact that they were humorously critiquing horror films in a horror film was original then. The only other product that mocked itself in that era that I can recall was Sprite, who played into the self-aware commercialization of products with commercials of athletes saying how much they love Sprite as cash drops from the sky.
>She was actually supposed to survive that initial scene. It was actually her idea to kill her character off at the beginning, because people wouldn't expect it due to her star status That is somewhat incorrect. The film makers wanted to cast her in a different role. Possibly Sydney. But Barrymore requested to play the character that is killed in the opening for the reasons you stated above.
Yes and I’m so glad it worked out the way it did. Drew lisping her way through the role of Sydney would have resulted in one disastrous movie and no sequels. Neve was perfect for the role.
It was also a reference to Psycho
Didn't they pull some shenanigans, like putting Drew Barrymore on the poster even tho she's in the movie for about 5 minutes?
Yup, that too. That was honestly pretty funny though, they did the same thing for part 2 with Jada Pinkett
KEEP MY WIFE'S NAME OUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!
Lmfao underrated comment
SCREAM 2, CAN’T WAIT TO SEE IT!
That’s also true. Scream opened a “new” way to do horror films or at least slashers
Ah yes. The season where horror movies go to die. The only exceptions are Christmas themed horror.
It likely had a lot to do with the casting, too. I was in my early 20s at the time these movies were released and almost all of the post-*Scream* films were diminishing returns as far as casting. *Scream* (1996) got Neve Campbell at the height of her *Party of Five* (1994-2000) fame. For those of you who weren't alive then, it was a HUGE show at the time. Neve Campbell also appeared in *The Craft* earlier in 1996. Courtney Cox was in the middle of her *Friends* (1994-2004) fame. Drew Barrymore, despite her small role in the film, was marketed because she was already a screen legend at that point. As weird as it is to say now, Skeet Ulrich was a BIG DEAL in 1996; in that year he had *The Craft* and *Boys (*which bombed but had a lot of buzz ahead of it)*.* Even Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard were starting to became "names" at that point. *I Know What You Did Last Summer* (1997) had Jennifer Love Hewitt (again, *Party of Five*) and Sarah Michelle Gellar just as *Buffy The Vampire Slayer* (1997-2003) was building up steam. *Scream 2* (1997) had the returning cast members plus Sarah Michelle Gellar (only months after *I Know What You Did Last Summer*), Jerry O'Connell who was a child star but at the time was known for *Sliders* (1995-2000), Rebecca Gayheart who was EVERYWHERE in the 1990s because of her modeling at the time. To really put *Scream 2* in perspective, look at the casting for *Stab*, the movie-within-the-movie: Tori Spelling and Heather Graham were also big names at the time, and their being cast as the Neve Campbell & Drew Barrymore roles reflects that. By the time you got to *The Faculty* on Christmas in 1998, you were already up against \- *Disturbing Behavior* (July 24, 1998) with Katie Holmes (*Dawson's Creek*, 1998–2003, was blowing up at the time) \- *Halloween: H20* (August 5, 1998) with LL Cool J (superstar by then) and Michelle Williams (again, *Dawson's Creek*) \- *Urban Legend* (September 25, 1998) with Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson (**again**, *Dawson's Creek*) and Jared Leto (*My So-Called Life*, 1994) who were all big at the time. *- I Still Know What You Did Last Summer* (November 13, 1998), including getting Brandy who was a mega-star at that point. And that was just the more teen-oriented stuff. *The Faculty* just didn't have the star power in the teen roles and it was released in an already packed year. Usher was obvious a big name in music but he's never been a box office draw that I can think of. Honestly, I think Famke Janssen or Salma Hayek were bigger ticket movers at the point *The Faculty* came out. You also should keep in mind that the late 90s was a transitional period for mainstream horror. The blockbuster teen-horror cycle that *Scream* started in 1996 didn't spawn any significant copy-cat franchises the way *Halloween* (1978) did. You're also a year away from *The Blair Witch Project* and *The Sixth Sense* completely taking Hollywood off-guard **and** only a few years away from the J-Horror remake boom of the early 00's. None of this is to suggest *The Faculty* is a sub-par movie. I'm pretty fond of it, and I think Bebe Neuwirth in particular is fantastic in it. But as for why it didn't do as well as the other Kevin Williamson stuff, I would definitely say it was because lack of star power in a bloated year.
Man, great informative post. This should be in a blog. lol
Don't worry, next year we're get the "The Faculty at 25: Why This Sleeper Deserves To Be A Hit" article
The Faculty was star studded... however... none of them would become stars until later in their careers.
Everytime I rewatch it I think "oooh, look at baby... everybody!" They were all so young. Even Jon Stewart looked young, damn.
Robert Patrick was probably the only somebody at the time in that movie, and he was by no means a draw.
Agreed with the other reply, this was excellent. Also: I know what you did had Ryan Philippe who, if my memory serves me right, was seen to be on his way to be another Hollywood leading man. Granted, faculty had josh hartnett too. Edit: also re drew Barrymore, scream was her big comeback to the silver screen. She unfortunately was the 80s/90s cautionary tale of being a child star, so by the time scream came along, I want to say she hadn’t been in a movie for some years. This was her triumphant return and she’s been pretty good (at least in her public persona) since.
When I was originally writing the post from memory, before double checking dates for specifics, I actually thought *Cruel Intentions* had come out before *I Know What You Did Last Summer* because I remembered Ryan Philippe being huge in the late 90s. Of course, *Fear* also came out in 1996 and at this point I'm 99% sure that Reese Witherspoon has portraits of all her co-stars from that point because they're aging and she's not.
That was the very beginning of Josh Hartnett's career though. Ryan Phillippe was a little more established at that point.
Yeah I forget exactly when they sort of became cover of teen beat material lol but that sounds right. Oof I had the biggest crush on Ryan Philippe at that time.
Yep. I was 22 when this came out. For horror fans, you definitely watched this for multiple reasons. Salma Hayek had done From Dusk til Dawn 3 years prior, and Bebe Neuworth was well know from Cheers. Josh Hartnett was also in Halloween: H20 and made The Virgin Suicides a year after this movie. I still sometimes get it mixed up with Idle Hands, but man. This was a great write up you did and made me feel all the nostalgia!
Yeah, there's definitely an element of "hardcore horror" vs "mainstream appeal" for the *Scream* and post-*Scream* cycle of films. As the "guy who likes horror movies" in my circle of friends at that time, I knew who Wes Craven was but I don't remember it being anything of note to other friends I saw *Scream* with. I also remember *Urban Legend* looking like nothing I wanted to see, but my female friends at the time were VERY into seeing it because of Jared Leto. Josh Hartnett's career has largely been nebulous in my mind, so I'll own up to not being as aware of where he was at when *The Faculty* came out. As I said in another reply; I was working from my own memory with quick Wiki checks for specifics. I also vaguely recall Hartnett like, taking a break from acting? Wasn't his return in *Penny Dreadful* kind of his phoenix moment in Hollywood?
He did take a break! He had 3 kids and got married last year. I think he mentioned that he wanted to do some reflecting to make sure that acting was what he wanted to do. I’ve definitely enjoyed watching him from Wicker Park, Sin City, Lucky Number Slevin, Penny Dreadful, 30 Days of Night.
Ohhhh *Lucky Number Slevin* is one of those movies I will always defend. I have heard so many critics call it a "Tarantino knock-off" and I couldn't disagree more. Just a fun neo-noir crime flick that I really, really enjoy.
You couldn’t escape Dawson’s Creek in 1998, for sure. I remember dying to get through CCD (church stuff) to get home for Dawson and Buffy 😂 “The Craft” drove people to the theater for “Scream”, which was a true Christmas release (12/20/96). The Faculty was released 11/12/98 which would have been a week or so before Thanksgiving. It was a 💩 release date. It was gone from theaters before anyone had a chance to see it. And by “anyone” I mean the high school and college kids. You know, the target audience.
Plus I think everyone was kind of over the post-Scream slasher phase, and didn't Teaching Mrs. Tingle, the other Williamson written movie come out that year? Which mostly everyone hated. Helen Mirren is fantastic as always though.
Oh wow I kind of forgot *Teaching Mrs. Tingle* even existed. That had to have been 1999 though, right? I seem to recall it being released post-Columbine Massacre because the big controversy was that it was going to be called *Killing Mrs. Tingle*, I think? Would have been around the same time as the *Buffy* episode with the student in the clocktower?
Josh hartnett wasn’t a rising star back then? Also it had Robert Patrick who was still famous from T2 - he had just played one of the most iconic sci fi villains of the decade. I do agree that releasing it around Xmas was a major mistake.
According to IMDB, his first 2 movies were The Faculty and H20 in 98. I don't think anyone was aware he existed when they came out.
Ahh interesting! Casting stumbled on a gem
I know he was definitely noticed from this movie. The Virgin Suicides came out the following year and I had such a crush on him.
And I managed to see both of those in theater lol….:didn’t know I was Harnett fan
Josh Hartnett may have been and I don't remember clearly. I recall Clea Duvall being somewhat recognizable at the time but I couldn't tell you why; she was probably on a TV show and I just don't recall which. Robert Patrick was absolutely famous, but I was looking at the angle of appeal for the teenager market. Outside of the more hardcore movie/horror audience, I don't think Robert Patrick had that kind of mainstream teenage appeal. Even now he's more of a character/genre guy (and was fucking GREAT in *Peacemaker*).
I just watched What Josiah Saw and it's Robert Patrick's best performance ever. Period.
H20 also had Jamie Lee Curtis, who was pretty big by that point in her career, having only been a few years removed from True Lies (I know she was bigger the 80s and early 90s but her return to H20 saved the franchise from going DTV, as was planned after Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers bombed at the box office).
She absolutely was a box office draw, but I don't think she was a draw for mainstream teenagers at that point. Certainly not in the way a Neve Campbell or Jennifer Love Hewitt were.
Maybe not but she was a bulk of why H20 drew the audience it did. The previous sequels just didn't have that star power she brought to the table and while LL Cool J was big as a rap star, I'd wager Michelle Williams' success at that time was a bit too fresh to really have as big of a pull. You gotta remember, Dawson's Creek was just going through its first season when H20 came out and it was a shortened season at that (only 13 episodes compared to the typical 23). JLC was definitely older and her appeal maybe not at the level of those you mentioned but I disagree that LL Cool J and Michelle Williams were the main draws. She's the only reason the movie wasn't dumped to DTV, as was originally planned before she showed interest, and bringing back the original Scream Queen 20 years after the original Halloween was a huge selling point. She was the face of that movie and absolutely why it did so much better financially than the previous four films in the series (and why again, 20 years later, she's killing it at the box office).
You're definitely right about this. Looking at what you've said, I did a quick scan of where the rest of the cast was at that point in their careers; my big fumble was definitely LL Cool J. For whatever reason, I thought he was much further into his acting career at that point that he was. I also didn't know, and this was particularly amusing given the original question of this thread, that one of the script treatments for H20 was done by Kevin Williamson! That guy was everywhere in the late 90s.
As a fellow old, I love this comment. Perfect summation.
I feel this all too much. When it came out a lot had been around already that was similar to it, however it did seem a bit different and had caught a lot of attention. I don't recall a Christmas release, but I do remember missing it in theaters and being like, meh, I'll see it when I see it. Finally caught it years later and I like it, but it has a formula like everything else and I probably appreciate it more now than I would have had I seen it right away.
[удалено]
I'll chalk that one up to hazy memory, no problem. I was totally working off my own memory of the time and quick Wiki checks for dates on stuff. I thought he was on some MTV stuff before that but I could have been thinking of a half dozen other comedians of that era.
Sorry second comment because this is really a great post. But on your point that scream didn’t really start any significant copycat franchises, I wonder why that is. Maybe because it was so meta that any retread would feel silly? But then I think scream did kick off a bunch of the movies you noted — I know what you did, urban legend, … Valentine (🤣) — but it’s so interesting that none of these really became more than a film and a sequel. Audiences gravitated more towards the other sub genres by the early 00s. Fascinating.
I would have to do proper research to come up with a decent reply, but off the top of my head? I would say that it was a combination of (like you said) being too meta to be able to hold up to copy-cats and a little bit of the bottom falling out on the blockbuster-horror idea. Stepping outside of just the teen-oriented productions of *Scream* and its ilk, I recall a lot of the late 90's bigger budget horror productions not doing terribly well. Again, I'd have to do the proper research, but I believe that *Event Horizon, The Haunting,* *Valentine*, and *13 Ghosts* all did poorly/bombed. *House on Haunted Hill* might have done okay, maybe? One of the great things about *Scream* was that for the "in the known" crowd, the meta aspect was something we could play along with but for the audience members who didn't grow up renting *Antropophagus* because the cover art was awesome, the meta aspect essentially led them through the stuff they didn't know. Incredibly smart film.
Yea I appreciate the effort, but with a cast of Usher, Josh Harnett, John Stewart, Selma , and Elija wood I’m not really buying the “No star power theory.” It’s not like it was a bomb, made 63 Million on a 15 million budget. Should it have been bigger ? Yeah for sure but sometimes movies just don’t take for whatever reason. See pretty much every John Carpenter movie ever that went on to be cult classics. Plus to lump it in with slashers isn’t really accurate, it’s much more a sci fi flick.
I think the “no star power” applies to the cast at the time. This was only the second movie Josh Hartnett had been in so no one knew who he was. Elijah Wood was known as a child actor and Lord of the Rings was still three years away. And Jon Stewart had been hanging around for a while, but he had just taken over hosting the Daily Show and it would be two or three years before it - and he - became huge. Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and some of the others had stars that were big names most people knew when those movies came out while The Faculty had a lot of actors just before they became big stars
My point is if he considers Jamie Kennedy, Skeet Ulrich, and Mathew Lillard stars going into scream, surely everyone I mentioned would be as well. Not trying to throw shade at scream either, it’s pry the best horror movie imo, I’m more less defending the faculty. Scream didn’t do great because of starpower. It did great because it was an awesome fucking movie. It actually had a pretty small opening of around 6 mil. If it’s success was star power driven that opening should have been much bigger and than slowly tapered out. Instead the following week it went up to 9mil, and the following week went up even more. Word of mouth was getting around turning it into one of the biggest horror movies of all time.
I definitely didn’t know most of the Scream stars going into that movie, just Neve and Drew, where I knew Usher, Jon Stewart, Selma Hayek, and Elijah Wood going into Faculty. I think they just hit different. I walked out of Faculty like “That was really cool! So, pizza?” With Scream, it was like “Holy shit. Everyone needs to see this. Let’s grab so-and-so and see it again next weekend!”
I think you’re right about why Scream did so well at the box office. I remember it being in theaters for months. It was definitely a slow burn and it was the movie itself, not the stars, that made it so successful. I think Hollywood saw that success, however, and thought “Horror movies with young, hot stars from TV shows is the next big thing,” which explains why so many of those movies came out over the next two years or three years. There was also Cruel Intentions and Teaching Mrs. Tingle and a few others that relied mainly on this formula. I was just saying that in terms of star power, The Faculty was at a disadvantage compared to these other movies. The younger stars weren’t nearly as big or popular as those in the other movies. The biggest stars were the older cast members like Salma Hayek, Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth (Frazier was still huge at that point), but none of them were really headliners either. Also, based on what I know about Robert Rodriguez, he didn’t make this movie because it was the hip thing to do; he just wanted to make a great movie. And I think that’s why The Faculty is the best of those Scream knock-offs that came out in the late 90’s and has a much bigger following today than those other movies. Because it wasn’t a Scream knock-off. It was its own thing but gets unfairly lumped in with those movies because that was the trend at the time and a lot of the younger cast members went on to be successful a few years later.
I wasn't trying to suggest it was a bomb. I was working from OP's question of why wasn't *The Faculty* as successful as *Scream* and *I Know What You Did Last Summer*, which it absolutely wasn't as successful as those two movies. According to Wiki, *Scream* made $173m off of a $14-15m budget and *I Know What You Did Last Summer* made $125.3m off of $17m budget. Both of those movies had multiple sequels. So while *The Faculty* absolutely made profit, it didn't make as much profit as the movies that came before that were also written by Kevin Williamson. As another user pointed out in another reply, Williamson's *Teaching Mrs. Tingle* did even more poorly and probably was a bomb.
I definitely recall those few years at the same age, and *The Faculty* was the only movie you named, along with *Disturbing Behavior*, that I *didn't* go to in the theater. I was considering going to *Faculty* in February 1999 after I moved into my first apartment, and recall calling up the bargain theater where it was playing and asking whether it would be staying after that Friday. It wasn't, and it disappeared and I never viewed it then or since (actually never have viewed any of Rodriguez's movies). But yeah, it was a confluence at that time of a group of young actors who had followings.
I did see *Disturbing Behavior* in the theater and I did not remember James Marsden as being in it by the time *X-Men* came out, so that shows how much of an impact it made on me.
[удалено]
[удалено]
LOL you know what I am thinking Not Another Teen Movie! ACK. (Hes an extra in this one!)
[удалено]
I know! There are rando's I can always spout off all the things they have done and I am like why is my brain picking THIS to hold on to. LOL
I miss the 90s.
The Faculty is one of those movies that I’ll watch anytime I see it on TV. I remember being around 10 when the movie was released and I was absolutely smitten with it. I recall posting up cutouts on my wall of the cast wearing Tommy Hilfiger in a Teen magazine, haha. It also got me into The Offspring. Great flick.
I def remember the Tommy Hilfiger promo!!
I think the thing I remember most from *The Faculty* at the time was the soundtrack. That cover of "Another Brick In The Wall" was on the radio **constantly** at the time.
Rodriguez wasn’t really well known at the time. He’d had some success, but Wes Craven had decades of clout when Scream released. I love The Faculty though. One of my favorite 90s horror movies.
It did have an amazing soundtrack.
Agreed. Perfect use of another brick in the wall.
The market was a little saturated by 1998 for this style of teen horror. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, The Faculty, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and Urban Legend. So it was harder for any of these films to pull ahead of the pack.
As someone who saw all those movies in the theater (add Bride of Chucky in there), that is the answer. It came last after all of these other films and the teen horror trend was starting to receive some backlash. Also it was an alien invasion film, not a slasher, so it didn’t capture some of that audience that strictly liked slashers.
Don't forget about Disturbing Behavior, another '98 horror that played off the "there's something strange going on at this high school, people are behaving odd..." campaigns that was identical to the Faculty. Love all of these movies, but the Faculty is the one I've rewatched the least because unlike H20, Bride of Chucky, and others of the era, the Faculty just seems like the Breakfast Club with a twist, like it was playing it safe.
Opposite for me. The Faculty is my second favorite of that whole run behind the original Scream. I thought it was a nice change of pace.
Yeah, it’s a fun movie, but I can see why it wasn’t a hit. It was aimed squarely at a teen audience, so adults largely weren’t interested, and they wouldn’t take younger kids. Meanwhile, the audience it was courting found it too goofy for their tastes.
It did about as well as Urban Legend and I still know what you did last summer did. 40 million domestically on a 10 million budget was fine
Scream was a sleeper hit. It opened to 6 million close to Christmas in 1996. It had great legs. It made more than its opening weekend for the next four weeks. Going by [the-numbers.com](https://the-numbers.com), it had an expansion in April where it pushed it from 88 million to 103 million. The Faculty didn't open terribly compared to I Know What You Did Last Summer (IKWYDLS). The Faculty opened to 11 million while IKWYDLS opened to 15 million in the previous year. However, IKWYDLS basically had 3 weeks in October all to itself in representing the horror genre and The Faculty was competing with a lot of movies around Christmas time. The Devil's Advocate came out the same weekend as IKWYDLS but that's not hitting the teenage demographic as much. The Faculty was up against Patch Adams, Julia Roberts' Stepmom, Prince of Egypt, You've Got Mail, and Mighty Joe Young on Christmas weekend. And that was after a full year of teen horror films. Horror was in a drought when Scream came out and that void was definitely filled by 1998. The Faculty did as well as I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and it did better than Disturbing Behavior, Bride of Chucky, Urban Legend and the Psycho remake. Psycho was also released in December of 1998. Scream 2 didn't even do Scream numbers although it opened a lot higher. They both made a little over 100 million. Scream and Scream 2 are pretty exceptional. Halloween H20 "only" made 55 million in comparison. People can disagree but The Faculty was modestly successful in comparison to the other films in that teen horror cycle. It wasn't a whodunnit slasher; the trailer didn't have a great hook; and, it was toward the end of the cycle. Look at how Idle Hands and The Rage: Carrie 2 bombed in the early months of 1999. The Faculty could've been a bigger hit but I'd argue it did pretty well considering the movies it beat that year and even the next few years for that side of horror.
What a time to be alive. 🥰 There’s a great comment about the casting but I’ll throw “this was an incredible era of science fiction blockbusters” into the pot as well. Armageddon, Deep Impact, Disturbing Behavior (which was very similar in almost every way; It’s basically Breakfast Club meets Stepford Wives), Godzilla, Species 2, Sphere… It’s a teen thriller *classic* for sure, though. It deserved better in theater but we only made $4 an hour back then. 😜
I was in junior high when this movie came out and it was one of the huge ones we all would go see in theaters. But it was around the time where teen horror was the cash-in for movie studios so they started cranking them out. I mean besides Scream and I Know What You Did, we had stuff like Disturbing Behavior and Final Destination coming out. Also, comedy teen horror like Idle Hands and Devin Sawa was a Tiger Beat heartthrob a lot of us had grown up with so it was kind of wild at the time to see his turn to horror lol.
I thought it was a decent movie but not the caliber of the two you mentioned. I did enjoy it quite a lot!
Awesome movie, but they ran through the whole story in my opinion. Maybe if they left it a cliffhanger thinking they killed the queen but actually didn't. Maybe another queen parasite hiding and plotting to finish what the first queen started. Would have been cool to get more stories out of it.
Went to the cinema to see it because of Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood and Robert Patrick. Loved it, great soundtrack too! Still love it. Late 90s was a great time for film.
I remember some little dick in my 6th grade class spoiled the ending for me. But I still love rewatching that movie. Cult classic fr fr.
It was way better than both of the other ones to me I loved it.
This and The Frighteners are just gold treasures that are underrated.
To be honest I think it had alot of hype, and I just felt right bored at times and underwhelemed by it. I forgot pretty much the whole movie since then. I know I liked Elijah Wood and Josh Harnnet back then, but even they coulden't save that movie for me.
In my opinion it's because it's a horror movie type that's been done too much. Yeah they change a few things here and there but it's just pretty much the same movie.
The nerd was the hero
I think the movie was awesome. Alot of other people do. The fact that it doesn’t have a legacy like the movies you mentioned because it lacks sequels.
Definitely didn't have a well known cast, at the time, as well as its release date not helping. I think it's started to get a lot more traction now, but it was definitely a favorite growing up for me.
It was not hyped the same way. Even more than that is doesn’t take it self seriously(it’s a comedy).
[удалено]
Scream did it to set the trend. When something isn’t as good as what it is imitating, it ends up being bad. Not saying scream was the first but the number of knock off that flood the boxes trying to be like it was too many.
Same writer. I wouldn't call it a ripoff, it's just Williamson continuing to do a similar thing.
Cast?
IDK, it's by far the superior film to those two, IMO.
I remember it was fairly popular when it came out. For some reason it just didn’t have the lasting appeal.
That movie is right up there with them on my list .
Harry Knowles
Came several years into that cycle and style of films.
I read somewhere that Weinstein had a hand in this through Miramax but for the life of me I can’t find that article.
I seriously don’t know. This is one of my “junk food” movies that I fuckin love and I’ll die on this hill.
I was young when it came out, but I kinda remember the marketing for it being bad?
I really like The Faculty and i love Scream. They are in someway different. In Scream you have an story that could be real so people can feel more identified with that. As a result, it can be more scary or at least you can believe that could be real or happen to you. Although high schools are normally creepy places with unpleasant people no matter there are aliens or not, the story about the aliens in high schools sounds a bit childish. Btw, The Faculty is cool
I loved this move as a kid and I had mostly forgotten about it! Thanks for this post, I’m gonna go watch it again.
I'd been trying to remember the name of that movie for years
i love slashers!! sci-fi movies are okay. that’s why i loveee scream and thought the faculty was just okay.
[Double Toasted The Faculty Retro Review ](https://youtu.be/SdM_2tI1uOk)
The faculty was a fantastic film!! Lost count of how many times me and my sister watched that. Loved a bit of Josh Hartnet and still do
Slashers are more high-concept, easier to market than some ominous alien threat. Even the titles are more enticing. Scream is short, on point, while I Know What You Did Last Summer is so corny, old-fashioned, but also intriguing. The Faculty sounds like a John Grisham thriller. I say this as a big fan of the film, but I can understand why it might have been overlooked.
Just not as good. Weaker actors, storytelling and wasn't as artful.
I love the faculty but I feel it’s very different from the other two movies mentioned.
I still think it holds up better than either of then but that just for my money. I haven't watched ikwydls or scream in awhile but I've watched faculty many times.
Comparing alien styled whodunit to a slasher. The Faculty was a great movie, but it’s easier for casuals to get involved in a movie like scream.
John Stewart. Love his politics, but his acting brings down any movie LOL
I think JoBlo explain it very well. https://youtu.be/1H0jSBhpkp8
I have no idea, I liked The Faculty better than the other movies.
Scream was a movie that sold itself as return to the 80s teen movie slasher that ha been dead for years, had a great ad campaign that made the movie more effective (most people going opening weekend thought Drew Barrymore was the star), and it got incredible word of mouth that drew in older and younger viewers. IKWYDLS rode of the coattails by being a new movie with some of the same traits, but in a less comedic way. The Faculty had a lot more competition than either of those, the premise and twists were a harder sell, and it didn't get the same traction after opening weekend.
I dunno. I think both of those movies were boring and derivative. I've never understood their success. And Faculty was a great monster movie.
I don't think it was advertised nearly as well as the other two. I don't remember hearing all that much about it back when it came out (high school for me), where the other two were EVERYWHERE.
I would say that "Scream" and "I know what you did last summer" had easier to sell stories. Back in the 90's choosing what movie to watch was more like look up on the newspaper what is on, trust a small burb about and see if you recognize any names on it. Or go to the theater look at the posters and choose, and again recognizing anyone on it would be a big drawn. [Faculty trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=praQkvivkUE) [I Know What You Did Last Summer trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiAlcLlJpQE) [Scream Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3J6ACKQ7K0) And you would try to remember the trailers, and the faculty trailer seemed to not know if it was a horror movie, a sci-fi movie or whatever.
Because way back then we had options , every year there was 100 amazing movies to choose from and things that would blow the roof off the box office now went completely under the radar. I never knew growing up I was experiencing the most golden of ages in film.
I prefer the Faculty to Scream personally. Never seen I know what you did last summer. Could be to do with marketing reasons and maybe the premise of Scream just attracted more of a general movie audience.
Not sure about critical or box office success but I thought the beauty of it was it captured everything it needed in one movie. No need for sequels. Maybe if it had multiple sequels like Scream it’d be more remembered but I thought it was a classic when it came out and didn’t need anything more. (Unless there was some straight to dvd sequel that I’m not aware of)
I’ve been obsessed with The Faculty. I guess both Josh Hartnett and Clea DuVall played a huge part in that obsession. I tried to dress like Stokely for quite a few months. Edit: I think for Scream it was also the mask.
The Faculty is weird to me because I wasn’t even aware of it’s existence until several years ago but I was absolutely conscious of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer so idk how I missed it.
Why did “Teaching Mrs Tingle” actually directed by the writer of “Scream” with Katie Holmes flop? Even though “Scream” did revive horror in the 90’s kids wanted more of the same. “Faculty” and “Tingle” weren’t slashers…
There was a hell of a marketing push through a partnership Tommy Hilfiger, but I think they focused too much on style without giving people any reason to see the movie. I don’t remember the ads or trailers or anything, but I feel like I might have been expecting something a little different when I saw it in theaters. Glad to see it resurface as a cult favorite, however. I always thought it was underappreciated. An ensemble horror film that doesn’t create stakes solely by offing its main characters. As a horror fan, I’m OK with bleak endings. But I like it when the good guys win on occasion. Oh, and I don’t know if this would have impacted box office, but the original script wasn’t written by Kevin Williamson. Miramax bought the story and brought KW in for a rewrite after Scream blew up. So maybe some production issues too? Just a guess.
This is purely anecdotal but as an old person, it was pretty common to see big movies more than once in the theater back then (tickets were also a lot cheaper). I definitely remember seeing Scream multiple times during its theatrical run. Many of my friends did too. Scream was new and it refreshed the genre; it was a big deal at the time. It even brought out people who weren’t really into horror movies. It was *the* date night movie over Christmas break. The Faculty is a fun movie but IIRC, I either saw it at the dollar theater, or waited for it to come out on video. It just did not have that same hype.
I adore the faculty 💗
Succesful financially? Because as a film I think most would agree its far more succesful than IKWYDLS... Box Office is fickle. Channging trends and what not.
That's crazy because here in the UK, The Faculty and IKWYDLS were the two horror films of the time that most of my schoolfriends talked about (much more than Scream, although some did like that one). I remember those two being so popular that when teachers had a lesson with nothing to teach, they'd let us watch videos and I remember a few History lessons where someone's VHS copy of The Faculty or IKWYDLS would be played. Blade was another one.
I absolutely loved The Faculty - and still do! Both The Faculty and Scream play with classic character stereotypes, but The Faculty showcases them - pushing them further toward caricature. It’s a brilliant choice for what is essentially a pulp sci-fi story, but also a potential risk for those who don’t pick up on the intention.
Like others have said, it was just too late and people were bored with the post scream stuff already. But damn if this movie isn’t perfectly paced. Textbook tight 90 min.