2016 military science fiction action film
Spectral is a 2016 Hungarian-American military science fiction action film co-written and directed by Nic Mathieu. Written with Ian Fried &amp; George Nolfi, the film stars James Badge Dale as DARPA research scientist Mark Clyne, with Max Martini, Emily Mortimer, Clayne Crawford, and Bruce Greenwood in supporting roles.
The film is set in a civil war-ridden Moldova as invisible entities slaughter any living being caught on their path. The film was released worldwide on December 9, 2016 on Netflix. On February 1, 2017, Netflix released a prequel graphic novel of the film called "Spectral: Ghosts of War" which was made available digitally through the website ComiXology.
Plot.
DARPA researcher Mark Clyne is sent to a US military airbase on the outskirts of Chișinău, to consult his created line of hyperspectral imaging goggles issued to US Army Special Forces led by Army General James Orland, who is covertly supporting the Moldovan government in an ongoing civil war against insurgents of the former regime, and to investigate the death of Delta Force operator Sergeant Davis; the goggles used by Davis and several other operators captured an unknown entity that kills almost instantaneously. The signal intelligence ops wrote it off as interference, but Clyne believes the sightings to be legitimate; conversely, CIA Case Officer Fran Madison believes the sightings to be local insurgency members wearing an advanced form of active camouflage technology and has orders from her superiors to retrieve any sample of it.
Orland assigns Clyne and Madison to a Delta Force team led by Major Sessions on an extraction mission to locate their missing Utah team at Durlești, where they find Comstock, one of the few survivors of the team, before coming under brutal attack by the invisible entities, who are impervious to small arms fire and explosives. The group escapes, but their vehicle are flipped over by a landmine, killing Comstock and forcing them to take shelter in an abandoned factory inhabited by another surviving Utah team member, Chen, and two Moldovan siblings; Sari and Bogdan, whose father died planting iron filings around it to protect them from the entities, known locally as "Aratare". 
The team establish radio contact with the airbase and set up a rendezvous for extraction, but must evacuate the factory on foot when entities bypass the filings. Using their newly constructed IED's and grenades laced with iron filings, the group race for the abandoned plaza for an alternate extraction point and barely manage to escape, but many troops sent to cover the landing zone, including Bogdan, are killed.
The group are redirected to a Moldovan-controlled civilian bunker as the airbase was evacuated after being overrun by the entities. Using information gathered from Sari, Clyne deduces the apparitions are likely made of Bose-Einstein condensate, and are incapable of passing through iron and also ceramic materials, which is why Comstock survived by hiding under a ceramic bath tub and the entities could not penetrate ceramic Tank armor plating. Working overnight with Orland and the surviving military engineers, he constructs ceramic armored suits and makeshift weapons capable of breaking down the condensate entities. The next morning, the remaining Delta operators, Clyne and Madison use V-22s to leave for the Masrov power plant, which Clyne believes can generate enough power for the condensate to work, and where all the entity encounters first started.
While the troops mount an offensive distraction on the roof of the plant, Clyne and Madison descend into a laboratory under the plant. There they discover the former regime's scientists had mass-produced the condensate entities as molecular copies of human test subjects' remains, whose peripheral nervous systems were hooked up to a central machine that keeps the copies alive, but they escaped when the facility was damaged during the civil war, leading to the current situation. With the battle above threatening to release the remaining condensates, Clyne manages to activate the failsafe that deactivates them. He also unplugs the human remains from the machine, finally letting them die in peace.
With the apparitions gone, the US and allied Moldovan military continue their work of taking control of the city from the insurgents while the DoD considers reverse engineering the condensate machine for wartime purposes. Clyne bids goodbye to Orland, Sari, and Madison, and is airlifted back home.
Production.
During the summer of 2014, Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures announced that commercials director Nic Mathieu would make his feature debut directing Fried's screenplay for the supernatural action film "Spectral" which would star James Badge Dale, Max Martini, Bruce Greenwood and Emily Mortimer. Described as a supernatural "Black Hawk Down", "Spectral" centers on a special-ops team dispatched to fight supernatural beings who have taken over a European city.
Ian Fried wrote the original script, which was re-written by Mathieu, Jamie Moss, John Gatins and George Nolfi, who received sole screenwriting credit, with Mathieu and Fried receiving story credit.
Principal photography.
Principal photography began on August 7, 2014. Shooting started on August 28, 2014 in various streets and buildings in Budapest, Hungary, relying extensively on practical effects and locations for an authentic, gritty atmosphere. Locations included Buda Castle, which served as the location of the landing zone scene, and Gellért Hill. Filming was completed in August 2015. Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop produced the futuristic weapons and Weta Digital created the visual effects for the film. Universal Pictures anticipated a release in August 2016 but decided against this and transferred the rights to Netflix which released it on December 9, 2016.
Release.
Initially, Universal Pictures was going to distribute the film, setting an August 12, 2016 release date for the film. In June 2016, the film was pulled from the schedule. Netflix later acquired distribution rights to the film and released the film worldwide on December 9, 2016.
On February 1, 2017, Netflix released a prequel comic of the movie called "Spectral: Ghosts of War" made available digitally through the website ComiXology.
Critical reception.
Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 78% based on 9 reviews, with an average rating of 5.70/10.
Writing for "The Verge", Tasha Robinson summarises "It’s understandable that Netflix jumped at the chance to grab what was intended as a big-screen, large-scale thriller. But "Spectral" winds up feeling like a much smaller film, like something that was intended for a casual streaming experience all along."
References.
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