Spectral is a 2016 military science fiction action film directed by Nic Mathieu. Written by himself, Ian Fried, and George Nolfi from a story by Fried and Mathieu. The film stars James Badge Dale, Max Martini, Emily Mortimer, Clayne Crawford and Bruce Greenwood. The film was released worldwide on December 9, 2016 on Netflix. On February 1, 2017, Netflix released a prequel graphic novel of the film called Spectral: Ghosts of War which was made available digitally through the website ComiXology. Plot DARPA researcher Dr. Mark Clyne flies from Virginia to Moldova, the current deployment location of the US military in the ongoing Moldovan War, to be consulted on one of his creations, a line of hyperspectral imaging goggles that have been issued to troops there. After arriving at a US military airbase on the outskirts of Chișinău, he meets with US Army General Orland and CIA officer Fran Madison. They show him footage captured by the troops' goggles of a mysterious, translucent, humanoid apparition that kills almost instantaneously. Knowing it is not interference, Orland wants Clyne's expert opinion before forwarding the findings and footage to his superiors. Conversely, Madison believes the sightings to be members of the local insurgency wearing an advanced form of active camouflage and has orders from her superiors to retrieve a sample. To get a clearer shot of the anomalies and identify them, both Clyne and Madison accompany a team of Delta Force operators into the field to find Utah team that went missing the day before. To capture a better image of the apparitions, Clyne mounts a larger, more powerful version of the hyperspectral camera on top of one of the armored personnel carriers. Upon arriving at the location, they discover all of the members of the Utah team (except one member named Comstock, who is found alive hiding under a bath tub) are dead along with the insurgents. They are ambushed by the apparitions, who, being impervious to small arms fire and explosives, inflict heavy casualties before the soldiers retreat. After landmines render their vehicles inoperable and kill Comstock, the group takes cover in an abandoned factory where they find two children barricaded inside. The apparitions attempt to follow them but are stopped by a barrier of iron shavings. The children share that their father scattered the shavings to protect his children before he was killed. The survivors make contact with the airbase