So, this movie was released like three days ago, as a Netflix exclusive. The premise sounded good to me: soldiers fighting ghosts? Sure, sounds awesome. Interestingly, the film was originally going to be distributed by Universal Pictures – but after it was pulled from schedule, Netflix acquired the rights to the film and released it. It shows a little bit, for reasons I’ll explain below.
Alright, so here’s the deal. A DARPA researcher goes to Moldova to help soldiers resolve some issues they’re having with their “hyper-spectral imaging goggles”, which he invented. Turns out these anomalies they’re seeing are ghostly apparitions that can kill people simply by touching them. Of course, the government refuses to believe this – instead thinking the ghosts are enemy soldiers in active camouflage – and sends a team to investigate. What starts as an investigation turns into soldiers fighting ghostly enemies they can’t see or hear. Sounds like a pretty stock sci-fi horror plot setup.
Just wait. Things go off the wall real quick. Spectral is a bizarre movie, with plenty of twists. During the last action sequence, I was a little stunned by the movie I was watching (it felt like it had changed genres completely). I’ll give the art direction some credit at least in this part; the robots and futuristic body armor looked great. The ending was a little disconnected, but it was also good enough to give me a minor existential crisis, so there’s that.
I don’t have a lot of complaints about the movie – although the flamboyant usage of scientific-sounding words did tick me off a little bit. I’ll forgive the writers though; they had to make the plot work somehow. I did notice that some production elements were displaced (probably by that distribution foul-up I mentioned earlier). The re-recorded voiceovers sounded way off their on-screen counterparts several times – most noticeable during the scenes in an underground bunker. But where the production didn’t fail was in visual effects: Spectral comes across as an A-level budget with a B-level plot.
Oddly enough, Spectral actually feels like a science experiment. Netflix has been trying out lots of alternative media lately – their platform offers an opportunity for projects that aren’t so committed, which promotes new ideas. Spectral is a step in the right direction: a pretty good movie resuscitated from the cutting room floor, with a couple fresh ideas and mostly-unknown actors. Watch this movie if you really like science fiction, or if you’re looking for something fun to do on a Saturday night.
You can watch the trailer for Spectral here.
