Written by Kevin Williamson (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) and directed by Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado), The Faculty would seem to promise a synergistically extra-special take on the teen-thriller genre. Instead, it’s simply an unremarkable slice of the same. Rodriguez’s touch is so indetectable, I didn’t even realize he was the director until the credits rolled.

Here’s the story: Coach Willis seems different somehow, mellower but at the same time more menacing. Something’s up and it seems to be spreading. This leads to the formation of a cross-clique wonder team of students who have somehow managed to avoid assimilation. There’s the cheerleader and the jock and the geek and the outcast and the rebel and – in the only real break from The Breakfast Club template – the girl from Atlanta. Under the tentative leadership of the geek (Elijah Wood) they figure it all out and figure out how to fix it with the help of some low-rent drug the rebel (Josh Hartnett) has cooked up in his rec room.

The special effects are used sparingly and are pleasantly unhokey, the terror is something less than total, there’s plenty of occasions to wonder who the head alien is, and it all ends, thankfully, in nudity. Not that this whole killing-the-head-alien-makes-everyone-normal thing doesn’t come off like a confusion of tropes. Aliens aren’t vampires, after all, and you’ve either got a parasitic prawn in your head or you don’t. But anyway … .