Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Spectral"

*Now with 98% less white highlighting! What a hack!

As far as I know this is streaming only, so no box art.

Spectral (2016)

Directed by Nic Mathieu
Produced by Jon Jashni, Thomas Tull
Written by Ian Fried, John Gatins, George Nolfi, Story by Ian Fried

Starring James Badge Dale, Max Martini, Emily Mortimer, Bruce Greenwood

Budget: $70M (supposedly)

The Netflix definition of "original" seems to differ somewhat from my own. Not only was this not produced by the streaming service (it was originally produced by Legendary and Universal, who were unsatisfied with the final cut and sold the rights to the 'Flix), but this movie isn't really an original premise. Of course, I'm not asking for 100% originality in my near-future science fiction (because that's impossible), but maybe cool it on the claims.

Spectral is essentially a B-movie with A-list cast and production design and C-list science, averaging it firmly in B-movie territory. Here's the premise: there's a problem in Moldova, some soldiers and DARPA engineers go to check it out, and then they fight ghosts. Then spoilers:

Except they're not really ghosts. They're molecularly-scanned copies of human beings 3D printed out of Bose-Einstein condensate and controlled by some brains-in-jars.

I spoilered that because I think this movie is good enough for action-sci-fi geeks that it's worth seeing it out. Just a warning, it features some of the worst Hollywood techno-jargon, and not like Primer.

We start off with Kirk Cameron James Badge Dale playing DARPA genius who invented hyperspectral headsets for soldiers. He's called in by General Orland (Greenwood) after soldiers start dying under mysterious circumstances. After a disastrous attempt at rescuing a stranded team, they have to get back to friendly territory while avoiding the "Spectrals" who can one-hit-kill people and aren't hurt by conventional weaponry.

Like I said, a B-movie concept. However, there's plenty of stuff here that clashes with what should be a light action movie: the visual design is really, really good, from the ruined cityscape to the makeshift plasma weaponry at the end. The acting isn't terrible, not on the level of Battle: L.A. There's some moderately clever stuff done by the main characters and the action scenes are cohesive and mildly effective (at first).

And then Dale says he'll reverse the polarity of his camera to turn it into a spotlight and things go downhill from there. If you want me to take your movie seriously, you should put a little more work into the science than "none at all."

The Good
Like I said above, the movie looks good. From the near-future gear to the robo-rottweiler to the weapons facility near the end of the movie it manages to put forward a consistent vision of near-horizon tech. If you're able to forgive significant plot details for the sake of the setting, this might work out.

Similarly, the acting is functional. While that might not sound like high praise it's more than you can sometimes expect. I'm going to draw another parallel to Battle: L.A. and how all the acting in that film was flat as hell, particularly the Survivor Children which populate both films (it's either kids or animals, but it packs a harder punch if you kill children).

For most of the movie I totally bought into the premise of these battlefield ghosts messing things up. The first real fight between the squad and this semi-invisible, incredibly deadly creature feels tense, follows a logical series of events, and even if most of the dead guys were expendable it's still effective watching them poof.

The Bad
Unfortunately, when the movie hit the halfway point things started falling apart. It starts with really lazy science nonsense, some attempts at sentimentality that don't quite scan, and the plot getting ahold of the Spectrals and giving them a power-up for the hell of it. Hell, the logic of what the Spectrals can do kind of breaks apart at roughly the hour mark. It reminds me of those movies with vaporizer weapons that simply knock the hero back instead of dusting him.

While the production is really neat, there are some points with some really obvious ADR without regard to the portrayed tone, volume, or, yes, actual words. This was primarily noticeable during the big science-exposition scene where we get the reveal of what the Spectrals are, which leads into my next spoiler:

The brains-in-jars are actually full nervous systems which are...used to control the Spectrals? But were the nervous systems removed from the original human or from the 3D printed Condensate version? Why do they make a big dumb tornado at the end? Why do they explode? There's just enough information to jog my suspension of disbelief but never enough to settle it back down.

The Rest

I really like Westworld.

I think the most damning thing about the movie is that I don't have anything for this section. It's a shrug of a movie. While the tech stuff is neat and the action is competent, just don't go in expecting anything brilliant.

Oh, the 3D printing stuff reminded me a lot of Westworld.

The Verdict
I thought it was fine, on the level that I actually tried to avoid spoilers. Maybe I would have been more open to the movie if the "reveal" had been revealed to me.

It's probably worth a watch if you're looking for a video-game style story to watch.