Here we are again. With another week comes another Sunday. And what better way is there to spend a lazy Sunday than by dumping some time into some good old-fashioned Netflix streaming?
Two weeks ago, we ventured outside of the Netflix realm with Amazon’s Patriot, but this week we return to Netflix’s giant library of content to check out the Netflix original Spectral.
This is the heap of the crop, or the top of the creme — err, creme of the crop — when it comes to streaming sci-fi action thrillers. I’m glad I watched Kill Command before finally getting around to watching Spectral, because Spectral is a far better movie and Kill Command would have been far less enjoyable had I saved it for later.
Spectral stars Jack Bauer’s partner and one-time son-in-law, Chase Edmunds, as a scientist called in to investigate weird army-related stuff. He basically needs to check out some GoPro helmet-cam footage of what appears to be, uh, Spectral in nature.
Emily Mortimer’s character thinks it’s camo tech, but Chase is like, “Sorry, but no.” Clayne Crawford plays a military version of Clayne Crawford, while the dude from Season 4 of Continuum is cray cray. They all go on the hunt for answers and spectral-based action ensues.
But unlike most movies of this ilk — which are lucky if their CGI and special effects aren’t completely laughable — Spectral has some solid, honest-to-goodness action.
In fact, there’s one sequence in particular that I suspect is a practical effect, and if it’s not that only goes to show how convincing some of this stuff is. And the spectrals themselves look awesome, like a contemporary ghostly version of something out of one of the Brendan Frasier-helmed Mummy movies. But better.
Spectral even manages to have a decent score, smartly aping the Bourne series. It’s a move I wholeheartedly sign off on, as there are worse movie scores to emulate (I’m looking at you, almost every Marvel movie ever made).
And to top it all off, there are hilariously oversized guns.
If you’re interested in learning more about Spectral before taking the streaming leap, check out the trailer below.
