Spectral (2016)
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A special-ops team is dispatched to a civil war-torn region to face off against invisible, lethal entities.
The story
DARPA engineer Mark Clyne is sent to an American military airbase in Chișinău to investigate the death of a Delta Force operator during a civil war in Moldova. The military is equipped with Clyne's hyperspectral imaging goggles, which detect invisible entities that kill almost instantly. While Clyne believes the sightings are real, CIA Case Officer Fran Madison suspects advanced camouflage technology used by insurgents. Orland assigns Clyne and Madison to a Delta Force team led by Major Sessions on an extraction mission to locate a missing Utah team at Durlești.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
DARPA engineer Mark Clyne investigates the death of a Delta Force operator in civil war-ridden Moldova, where invisible entities are slaughtering people. Using hyperspectral goggles, he confirms the entities are real, while CIA Officer Fran Madison suspects insurgent technology. They join a Delta Force team led by Major Sessions to find a missing Utah team. They find one survivor, Comstock, but are attacked by entities impervious to firearms. They take shelter in a factory with another survivor, Chen, and two Slovene siblings, Sari and Bogdan, who use iron filings to deter the entities, known as 'Aratare'. After a harrowing escape where Bogdan dies, the team reaches a civilian bunker. Clyne deduces the apparitions are made of Bose–Einstein condensate, making them vulnerable to iron and ceramic. He constructs ceramic suits and pulse weapons. They head to a power plant in Masrov, the source of the entities. Clyne and Madison discover the former regime mass-produced the entities as molecular copies of human remains. Clyne activates a failsafe to deactivate the entities and unplugs the human remains, letting them die. The military resumes control of the city while the DoD considers reverse-engineering the machine.
- First release year
- 2016
- Runtime (minutes)
- 107
- Production countries
- United States; Hungary
- Original languages
- English; Russian; Romanian; Slovenian
- Directors
- Nic Mathieu
- Writers
- George Nolfi · screenplay; Ian Fried · story; Nic Mathieu · story
- Cast and characters
- James Badge Dale · Mark Clyne; Max Martini · supporting role; Emily Mortimer · supporting role; Clayne Crawford · supporting role; Bruce Greenwood · supporting role
- Genres
- military science fiction; action; thriller; war
- Themes
- supernatural warfare; scientific ethics; survival
- Tone and mood
- gritty; supernatural; tense
- Premise and plot tags
- military science fiction; supernatural action; techno-thriller
- Franchise connections
- Spectral: Ghosts of War (prequel graphic novel)
- Reception
- The film received a 78% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though some critics felt it felt smaller in scale than intended for a big-screen thriller.
- Reported review scores
- Rotten Tomatoes · score: 78% · review count: 9
- Production trivia
- The film was shot in various streets and buildings in Budapest, Hungary.; The landing zone scene was filmed at Buda Castle.; The futuristic weapons were produced by Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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