Let's dive in with the story. Overall the premise of the movie is quite interesting. We go most of the movie not knowing what this new enemy is and trying to find a way to see it and kill it. Soldiers and civilians are dying left and right and we know nothing about this new enemy. The elite special ops team joins up with an engineer to develop how to see and kill this new enemy. For the most part the story flows relatively smoothly and makes pretty good sense. There were a few times that things got extremely technical and it seemed they played pretty loose with the interpretations. One was talking about a state of matter called the Bose-Einstein condensate. I did some research on this and while they did a good job explaining what it really is, and they had reasoning for what the did with it, it really seemed to be a stretch based upon the articles I read. Next was near the end the engineer is making advanced weaponry in a safe house made from random parts found. He ends up making enough for roughly 20 soldiers out of junk found in the safe house and random military cases. This was probably the most far fetched part of the movie in my mind. Story ends up with 1/2 a star due to these few issues.
Directing is next. With a Netflix exclusive film and a director I have never heard of I was not sure what to expect. Overall I thought he did a pretty good job. There were some fantastic scenes that utilized slow motion and slow audio to create hyper-realistic situations. The sets were fantastic, the costumes were really cool and the war action seemed on par with major motion picture war films. The vehicles and weapons were futuristic, but not unbelievable and they had a logical explanation for pretty much everything in the film. The only tick against directing that I came up with was as we neared the end of the film the enemy that is not able to be seen by the naked eye is visible in quite a few scenes where I don't feel they should have been so visible. This leads me to give 1/2 a star for directing as well.
Next up is casting and acting. On the casting side of it there really weren't any big names in the film. The biggest name I think most people would recognize is Bruce Greenwood. Quite a few movies are made better by having recognizable people in them, but in this case I would say it didn't really hurt the final product at all. Acting was quite good. I think we have to give some credit back to the last category of directing, but the whole acting cast did a very solid job. War scenes were realistic, reactions to different stimuli seemed authentic, interactions felt real, fatigue seemed genuine and it all results in an enjoyable movie. Casting and acting gets a star.
Editing is next, and I wasn't sure whether to blame the tick against directing for the visibility of the invisible enemy against it or here under editing. I chose directing because that seems like it was a choice of flow to have them visible by the director. I do think it makes sense what he chose to do in order for the movie to be more understandable, but it violated the rule of the enemy being invisible to the human eye. Anyway, back to editing. The use of slow motion, the fantastic sets and the visuals and movements of the invisible enemy were all fantastic. I was very surprised for a Netflix exclusive with a director I am not familiar with. Editing gets a star.
Last up we have enjoyability. Like normal you can infer from my review thus far that this move is really fun to watch. If you go in without the critics eye the movie flows very well and is very enjoyable. I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes war films, scy-fi films, supernatural films, action, suspense...and so on. It really should be a likeable film by most viewers. Enjoyability gets a star as well.
Here we are at the end of another review. Netflix's Spectral receives a 4 star review from me, and if you are a Netflix member you should check it out! Ciao for now and see you for the next review!
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