“They’re not alive. They’re not dead. They’re just trapped somewhere in between.”

Justin’s rating: Who you going to radio for afterlife support?

Justin’s review: “Humans vs ghosts” is such a great concept that it should be far more explored, except that some 1984 comedy immediately cornered the market on it. Other than the odd flick like The Frighteners, we haven’t seen a lot of development in this space. But then came along Spectral, which largely ditches the jokey side of the aforementioned movies to make this a thrilling scifi actioner where G.I. Joe unloads the latest military hardware against ghouls, ghosts, and poltergeists. How could I not want to see that?

Embroiled in a civil war in Eastern Europe, US special forces come across a threat unlike any they’ve ever seen. Invisible foes, which are first attributed to camouflage outfits, are one-shotting soldiers and baffling the armies involved. And these things are brutal, chasing after soldiers with a vengeance. And seeing them overrun by forces they can’t combat — wiping out scores of highly trained soldiers — makes this a very serious threat indeed.

Desperate, the army turns to DARPA scientist Clyne (James Badge Dale, The Grey), whose “hyper spectral” goggles allows the spec ops teams to see strange apparitions — ghosts, in other words. And you can best believe that Clyne’s clever inventing skills are going to whip up some gadgets to take down these Caspers.

What’s cool about Spectral is that it tries hard to take a grounded, semi-believable approach to both the ghosts and the scientific response to them. It’s a big “what if?” scenario played absolutely straight, even though the end product is people with gigantic temperature-fluxing rifles ghostbusting in a modern war environment. And without spoiling too many plot details, there’s an explanation given for the ghosts that’s also more grounded than expected.

The ghosts themselves aren’t scary-looking or even — sorry — that visually impressive, but this film does a good job conveying their sense of power. They effectively clothesline soldiers with their insta-kills, and at one point, a particularly angry spirit absolutely demolishes a tank from multiple angles.

Even without the phantoms spicing up the plot, Spectral is chock-full of military hardware, military logo, and military gung-ho-ness. It’s kind of like hanging out with the colonial marines of Aliens, except that everyone is deadly serious. It’s a war movie, through and through, with the first half playing out like a variation on Black Hawk Down.

As someone said on a forum, “This is a shooty movie in which the shooty guys need the science guy to make them able to be shooty again.” I couldn’t put it better myself.

I was direly concerned to see Emily Mortimer running around as a CIA officer with these troops. I mainly know her from 30 Rock and can’t help but worry about her avian bone syndrome in a war zone.

As much as I love the concept and most of the execution here, my main beef with Spectral is that it’s trying so hard to be this gritty war film that everything is shot in dim and overcast environments. It’s hard to see in many of these scenes, and I suspect that the obfuscation is deliberate for some reason. Maybe to hide budgetary limitations or to create more of a spooky environment, I don’t know, but I didn’t like straining my eyes to see this much.

A side beef — flank steak? — is that the characters and dialogue are straight-forward, generic, and lacking that special sauce that sets a great movie apart from a solidly good one.

That all said, this is still one heckuva watch. I first heard about Spectral a couple years ago and have been looking forward to seeing it ever since. It really didn’t let me down. Creative scifi war movies aren’t super common, and ones that can properly balance the action and the scifi elements even less so.

Intermission!

• If you work for DARPA, don’t be surprised when they want you to make weapons
• Yeah just sign the paper that will send you to prison for life if you blab about this situation to anyone
• Ceramic tubs are good hidey holes from ghosts, as they can’t get through for some reason
• Knee slide to a rocket launcher is a boss move
• The iron fillings barrier
• Anti-ghost grenades!
• How many times the ghosts stay visible even when the giant camera isn’t aimed at them
• “This thing is dead. We can’t see them. We’re blind.
• The ghost that takes out that tank hardcore
• Aww not the kid
• Giant camera robot dog