THE FACULTY. Miramax, 1998. Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Chris McDonald, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Jon Stewart, Daniel von Bargen, Elijah Wood. Director: Robert Rodriguez.

   High school was not a lot of fun for me back when I had to go, and if this movie is anything like how life in high school was some 40 ears after that, I’m not sure I’d want my kids to go now, another 20 years later, what with ostracizing on social media, body-shaming and other cyber-bullying, all things students my age in the late 50s would probably would have been happy to do if only they’d had the opportunity.

   But as the title suggests, the problem that the students at Herrington High are having in this movie are with the faculty, who are beginning to act stranger and stranger: when the school nerd (Elijah Wood) and the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and head cheerleader (Jordana Brewster) watching from a closet together see the football coach (Robert Patrick) and another faculty member (Piper Laurie) force a strange small creature into the ear of the school nurse (Salma Hayek) they know something is really seriously wrong.

   Can the entire faculty have been taken over by unhuman aliens? Delilah and Casey join up with a few other similar outcasts, each in their own way, to find out and to warn the police, to no avail. Shades of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, referenced several times, along with The Breakfast Club, in other words.

   A strong and lengthy list of cast members, including Jon Stewart in a brief role as a biology teacher, and Bebe Neuwirth as the school principal, makes this one work. I have only begun to skim the surface of what I could discuss about this movie, some scenes of which will stay with me for a long time. One might wish that the aliens remain unseen, or at least I did. Alien beings are always more fearsome if you know they’re there, but you can’t see them.