Spectral

Watched on the recommendation of a friend, Spectral is about American soldiers running into something very strange while mired in some conflict in Eastern Europe. It's invisible to the naked eye, able to pass through solid matter (most of the time), and bitterly cold. A scientist is pulled away from DARPA to help investigate, but he and the unit he's assigned to quickly find themselves overwhelmed and being slaughtered. The situation continues to get worse, even as they finally understand what they're up against, the question is whether there are enough people left to do anything about it before it moves beyond this single city.

The fact I can't remember the names of any of the characters is not promising. But I was more curious about what was going to be the answer behind the phenomena and how they were going to combat it. I'd originally resisted watching it because I assumed it was a supernatural threat, and that the movie was Ghostbusters, but played seriously. Ain't nobody got time for that.

But there is actually a sort of scientific idea behind what's going on, and the responses. I have no idea how accurate it is. Based on the little bit of reading I did on the subject online after watching the movie, it'd represent a massive jump forward from where we're at now, but the concept behind how the things are showing the properties they do seems right. Creating and sustaining them would seem to require an immense quantity of energy, though.

There was a bit at the beginning where the scientist is working on a device to instantly evaporate an enemy's water supply, in a portable gun (Ra's al Ghul would like to hear more). He's concerned when the bigwigs want it tested on living beings. Sure, why deprive an entire army of water and possibly kill the lot of them within two days when you can kill them one or two at a time by shooting them with it instead? I figured that weapon was going to factor in, Chekov's Evapo-Ray, but it was more how he had found a useful component by scrounging through old printers in a junkyard. His ability to MacGuyver the situation.

So I was interested in the concepts, but the story and the characters, not so much.