The Substitute

A ninth-period classroom, late fall, the hum of a broken fluorescent tube. A teacher leaves school in a wheelchair after her knee is destroyed by a student’s baseball bat. Her ex-special forces lover enrolls as a substitute, replacing his rifle with a gradebook. A Tarantino-worthy body count lands in the teacher’s lounge—final bell rings too late.

Streaming availability changes weekly. Check the Where to watch panel above — we re-pull TMDB's JustWatch index every week. If nothing's listed, the film is between licence windows.

Our similarity graph picks 6 films based on shared director, keywords, mood-cluster overlap, and MovieLens user co-rating — niche-biased away from blockbusters. Full list: /like/the-substitute-1996/.

Robert Mandel directed The Substitute in 1996. See Robert Mandel's full filmography, where to start with Robert Mandel, or where to go after you've seen everything by Robert Mandel.

The Substitute was released in 1996 (EN original-language production), with a runtime of 114 minutes.