Grade: C-
In the Netflix movie Spectral, Delta Force soldiers from Seal Team Six using DARPA weapons confront frightening and menacing creatures on the urban battlefields of Eastern Europe. These things look like people but are actually monsters made of energy who can kill with a touch. Or something, I was never quite clear as to what exactly was all going on in Spectral.
Borrowing elements from a lot of other movies like Aliens; little kids in danger, soldiers inside an APC running away from the creatures, a commanding officer who watches events unfold from the APC, Predator; soldiers being hunted by an invisible foe, Black Hawk Down; special forces soldiers in combat in a ruined urban environment and more, Spectral is a bit of a mishmash of concepts and styles. Which can be a good thing, lord knows that sometimes all I want out of a sci-fi movie is a mishmash of things from other movies. But I think where Spectral fails is that it never really sticks with any one concept long enough before dashing onto the next borrowed idea.
If the first half of Spectral is this slightly sci-fi story about special forces soldiers in the near-future fighting these weird energy creatures, then the end turns into this big sci-fi movie about these same special forces soldiers trading in their modern looking combat gear for futuristic power-suits and their machine-guns for energy weapons. It’s almost like if the first half is of Spectral is Black Hawk Down and the second half suddenly shifts to Starship Troopers where the first half is part I of the movie franchise and the second part II.
I think that if the creators of this movie would’ve stuck to a few ideas rather than many and made the story of the first half of Spectral the entire movie it would have made for a much more satisfying experience.
