The Faculty (R)
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This came out in 1998, but I didn't see it until 2026. It was written by Kevin Williamson, who also wrote Scream (among other things). While I don't think this movie is as good as some of his other work in the horror genre, I did like it well enough. There are perhaps too many characters, but it's a good cast, so I'll let that slide.

It takes place at a high school in Ohio, where there's a football coach named Willis (Robert Patrick), who basically treats his players like shit. When they leave the field after a practice, Willis is approached by someone unseen. Later that night, Principal Drake (Bebe Neuwirth) is attacked by Willis, who chases her through the school. She is then apparently killed by another member of the faculty, Mrs. Olson (Piper Laurie). But Drake will appear at school the next day, seeming fine.

The main characters, however, are students. They include a school newspaper photographer named Casey (Elijah Wood), who is the target of much bullying. He works with the paper's editor-in-chief, Delilah (Jordana Brewster), who is also the head cheerleader, and the girlfriend of the school's star football player, Stan. Stan decides he wants to quit the team to focus on academics, which he's not very good at, but he's tired of being given good grades just because he's on the football team. His decision upsets Delilah, who doesn't want to date him if he's not on the team. Coach Willis, on the other hand, seems strangely okay with it. Then there's a rebellious student named Zeke, who sells just about anything his fellow students could possibly want, including a drug of his own design, which is kept in empty pen casings. He runs afoul of a timid teacher named Miss Burke (Famke Janssen), but he doesn't worry about her. There's also an outcast girl named Stokely (Clea DuVall), whom Delilah picks on, erroneously calling her a lesbian. And there's a new girl at school, Marybeth (Laura Harris), who tries to befriend just about everyone.

Casey finds a small cephalopod on the football field, which he takes to the science teacher, Mr. Furlong (Jon Stewart), who believes it may be an undiscovered species. Later, Casey and Delilah sneak into the faculty lounge, looking for a story. When Willis and Olson come in, Casey and Delilah hide in a clost, and witness the teachers infecting the school nurse (Salma Hayek) with a parasite. They also discover the body of another teacher, Mrs. Brummel, who had been too old for the parasite to take control of her body, and died instead. Casey tells the police and his parents what they'd seen, but nobody believes him. Casey later talks to Stokely, who is a science fiction fan (she references "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"), but she's reluctant to believe Casey's theory that the faculty are being taken over by alien parasites. However, all the students go to the science lab to check out the creature Casey had found, but it has vanished. Then they're attacked by Mr. Furlong, whom Zeke kills with a drug-filled pen. It turns out his drug dehydrates bodies, and the aliens need lots of water to survive. Stokely theorizes that if they kill the "queen", all the other infected people will be released from the parasites' control (which doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but it does seem to be standard operating procedure for stories like this). Unfortunately, they don't know who the queen is, and more and more people are being infected by the parasites.

And I think I've revealed enough of the plot. There is a happy ending, that's all I'll say. Anyway, I thought it was a fairly fun movie. Not sure how memorable I'll find it, but I'm glad to have seen it.