Spectral

Language : English / Romanian / Slovenian

 

Year of release : 2016

Run time : 1h48m

Genre : Action / Thriller / Sci Fi

The movie was co-written and directed by Nic Mathieu.

Mark Clyne is a DARPA researcher, who is sent to Moldova to consult on the hyperspectral glasses. For some unknown reason, the US army is supporting the Moldavian government against insurgents of the former regime, in a civil war.

With these special glasses, they can see these beings which look like humans, and once they cross paths with people, they k1ll them immediately, freezing them on the inside.

Fran Madison thinks it's 'insurgents' wearing some special suits.

Clyne and Madison are assigned on a Delta Force team extraction mission. They find only one survivor who escaped by hiding underneath the iron bath tub.

On their way back, their vehicle is flipped over by a landmine, and they take shelter in an abandoned factory.

In the factory they find two kids who tell them their father placed iron around the factory so the 'aratare' (Romanian for 'appearance,wraith') won't be able to cross. The 'aratare' are apparently souls born out of war,in war zones. I'm Romanian, I've never heard of such thing! This was one of the few words they spoke in Romanian, as the rest were in Slovenian,I think.

I personally hated the movie. It was shot on these ugly khaki-brown colors.

They completely took me out of the movie with what they invented about Moldova,from the getgo!

Although the action takes place in Moldova, where they invented a dictator,insurgents and terr0rists (I hate it when they take a real country and put fiction on top of it, as it makes people believe their fiction is real. Why couldn't they choose a country in the Middle East,or even Ukraine,if they wanted a country from Eastern Europe,where there's always war? ), and they also speak mostly, I think, in Slovenian, and 5 sentences in Romanian, while the movie was shot in Budapest,Hungary.

Moldova is a country where they speak Romanian (78%) and Russian (Moldova was part of Romania, and taken by Russia in the '40's ) 22%. No Slovenian!

They don't even bother telling us it's 2 languages they merge, and the CIA lady, seems to be a translator too,as she understands everything! Not really, as they say one thing in Romanian, and she translates something else!

Somehow, Clyne always has everything he needs to build whatever he needs!

At first I thought it was aliens, and it was a let down when I found out it was people, and how where they made into ghosts. These beings which couldn't be k1lled made no sense, as they couldn't be destroyed, as long as they weren't unplugged from the source in the lab!!!

Apparently they wanted this to be a supernatural Black Hawk Down, but they failed miserably, as they had to pick a country which is not at war,in Eastern Europe!

The original script was written by Ian Fried, and was re-written by 4 other people, and I keep on thinking, the original script writer didn't intend for the movie to be what I just watched!

The visual effects were good.

The acting was fine.

The soundtrack was good, when it let itself known, just that, I felt it didn't match what was on the screen!

The movie is streaming on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads.

Rating : The horror, the horror!