The Tomorrow War

It's Christmas Eve in 2022, and Dan, a former  sergeant currently working as a teacher,   is supposed to be helping his wife Emmy and his  daughter Muri with the party. Instead he's on the   phone trying to apply for his dream job at a lab,  but unfortunately his application is rejected.   After throwing a disappointed tantrum outside, Dan  joins his daughter on the couch and reminds her to   do what nobody else is willing to do. The family  then watches an important soccer match, but the   game is suddenly interrupted when a glowing cloud  of smoke and electricity appears on the field and   people start coming out of it. These people look  like soldiers and they're led by Lieutenant Hart,   who informs everyone that they come from the year  2051. An alien species known as the "whitespikes"   have invaded Earth and most of humanity has been  wiped out, so these soldiers are here to ask   for people to travel to the future with them  and help them fight the war. As months pass,   countries all over the world send as many soldiers  as they can, but it seems it's never enough:   the future keeps asking for more people, and only  a quarter of those who go come back. When they   run out of trained soldiers, the government  begins drafting civilians to join the fight.   This causes riots on the streets because many  people believe they shouldn't be sent to a war   that doesn't affect them. Dan continues to work  as a teacher, but his students don't seem too   interested in what he has to teach because they  don't see the point if they'll be dying anyway.   The only exception is Martin, who is obsessed with  volcanoes and always wants to talk about them all   the time. At that moment Dan receives an important  message on his phone: he's been drafted. Dan goes   to the military facility and he's put through some  tests that confirm he'll be able to join the fight   because he'll be dead in seven years. Suddenly  Dan feels a painful sensation on his arm and   discovers they've put a metal device on his arm;  he's informed that the device will keep track of   him in the future. After seven days of touring,  the device will bring him back. Afterward Dan   goes to tell Emmy the news, and she immediately  decides they should run away. Dan points out he   can't get rid of a government tracker, so Emmy  begs him to talk to his dad, who Dan hasn't seen   since he was abandoned as a kid. Putting pride  aside for the sake of his family, Dan goes to see   his father James to ask for his help, but James  thinks Dan was sent by the government to spy on   him and an argument ensues. In the end, Dan has to  leave with the device still attached to his arm.   He returns home to give his family the bad news,  but he also promises he'll be back. The next day,   Dan goes to the training facility, where  he befriends a scientist named Charlie and   a fighter called Dorian, who is going back for  his third draft. They receive basic training,   which includes shooting and first aid, before  they're given a full explanation of how the time   travel technology works. The Timelink is similar  to two rafts on a moving river, and a river can   only move between those two points. That's why  they can only travel between 2022 and 2051,   those are the fixed points and they can't choose  something right before the war. Sometime later,   the trainees are resting in the barracks when  suddenly the alarm begins ringing: it's time for   them to leave. The trainees are confused because  they were supposed to have seven days of training,   but they're told the future can't simply choose  when they need help. Once everyone has gathered,   the Timelink is activated and a cloud like it  appeared during the soccer match begins absorbing   them into the future. They're supposed to be  going to Miami Beach, but in the control room,   something goes wrong with the output coordinates.  The group appears in the sky right above the city   and falls on top of a building, which causes many  of them to instantly die. The remaining members   manage to save themselves because they fall into  a pool and they only have to swim out. The team   looks down at the city of Miami and finds it in  complete ruins. They don't know how to proceed,   but at that moment they're contacted by a  colonel, who informs them the city has been   overrun by whitespikes so soldiers are coming to  completely bomb the place. The team's mission is   to rescue a research team that is trapped inside  a laboratory. The colonel knows Dan has experience   in the military and puts him in charge of the  team. Dan guides the team throughout the city,   giving them indications of how to move properly  and finding death and destruction everywhere   they go. They find the lab building and when  they enter it, they discover a dead alien,   so Dorian takes a claw as a trophy. Further inside  they find the research team, but they're all dead   as part of an alien trap. The colonel asks them  to retrieve all the copies of the research and to   hurry because if there are bodies around, the  whitespikes will be back and the jet fighters   are coming closer. The team rushes to pick up all  the necessary items, then they start making their   way downstairs as quietly as possible. However one  of the guys hears a noise and when he looks up,   they finally discover what whitespikes look like.  The alien shoots a spike from its tentacles,   killing one of them, and the team immediately  opens fire. Their bullets can't seem to damage   the aliens' thick skin, but at least it seems they  can slow them down as they run down the stairs and   find an exit hallway. The aliens kill and capture  many team members on the way, so Dan stays at the   back to defend them. Since his bullets won't  work, he attacks with a fire axe, which isn't   that effective either. Luckily Dorian comes to  the rescue and kills the creature by teaching the   team that the only weak spots are the neck and the  belly. With lots of whitespikes coming after them,   the team runs down the streets until they find the  tank that is coming to rescue them. Unfortunately   the whitespikes get to the tank first and destroy  it. Now the team has no choice but to fight the   aliens while at the same time trying to find  cover. As more and more team members fall to   the aliens' attack, the survivors fall inside a  tunnel, and Dan stops to rescue a fallen trainee.   This delays the entire team, and two of the  trainees decide to stay behind and act as a shield   against the aliens so the rest of the team can run  away. At that moment, the jets finally arrive and   bomb the entire area. Hours later, Dan and Charlie  wake up in a forward operating base in the Dominic   Republic. They find Dorian, who informs them  the rest of the team is dead and scolds Dan for   having stopped to help a fallen person which put  in danger anybody else. Dorian admits he suffers   from cancer, and he's learned that he's the one  that gets to decide when he dies. Their talk   is interrupted when Dan is requested to see the  colonel. When he hears another soldier refer to   her by her surname, Dan is shocked to realize this  is an older Muri. She grew up to be a scientist,   and she's the lead researcher in the R-Force,  which she created herself. Muri explains she   didn't bring Dan to see her father again, she  actually needs his help with something - in   fact she acts all cold and professional around  him. Then she proceeds to show him the recording   of a different-looking whitespike. All the aliens  they fought in the city were males, and this one   is female. She's more aggressive and much rarer,  she also nests underground. The male whitespikes   will die to defend her because it seems all they  care about it's the survival of their species. The   bombs the military use have a toxin Muri created,  and so far it's been killing the male whitespikes   without issues. However the female alien survived  that toxin, so Muri needs Dan to join the   extraction team and capture a female whitespike to  be studied. Hopefully they can develop a stronger   toxin that will kill the aliens' main source of  reproduction. The team gets ready and leaves in   helicopters, where Muri tells Dan the story of  what happened. The aliens showed up out of nowhere   in Russia in 2048, somehow avoiding all satellite  imagery and radar. It only took them three years   to take over the world, and they don't care about  material things, they just want humans as food.   Dan wants to know what happened to him before he  died, but Muri thinks it's better not to go down   that road. Moments later, they arrive at the nest,  where they find a bunch of soldiers trying to tie   up the female whitespike. The alien is furious  and begins attacking the soldiers, killing lots   of them. Muri joins them and lands a clean shot on  her neck, giving the others the chance to put more   rope around her and stop her from leaving. Finding  herself caught, the female alien cries out to call   for her protectors, and soon the area is swarmed  with aliens. While the female tries to attack   Muri, Dan comes down and shoots at as many aliens  as he can before joining the others in the nest to   help save his daughter. Together the soldiers push  the female into the cage and a helicopter, but now   the males are trying to attack the helicopters too  to save her, even making one crash. Dan and Muri   run to a jeep and start firing at the aliens to  give the helicopters the chance to escape with the   cage. Afterward the two of them drive at a great  speed to escape the area. They stop at a beach to   send an SOS flare, and Muri scolds Dan for acting  without thinking. Dan just wants to protect her,   but Muri doesn't believe him and explains he  left the family when he was twelve because the   depression of not working on what he wanted hit  him hard. When she was sixteen, Dan was in a car   accident, and Muri was at the hospital when he  died. Muri is hurt by all this, and Dan has no   words because he can't believe he became like his  father. Suddenly he realizes he may understand   James when he said that the war left him in a dark  place mentally. The female whitespike is taken to   a fortified offshore oil platform, where the time  machine is kept. She's chained and given a huge   amount of sedatives every hour. Dan and Muri work  together on analyzing the alien's DNA and trying   to discover how she stops the toxin from killing  her. It's a lot of work that takes them many days,   but it also allows them to bond again and chat in  a more friendly way while they share meals. The   night before Dan has to leave he tells Muri that  he's proud of her and that her mother would've   been proud too. Dan tries to tell Muri she needs  to rest and to give him more to do since he's   supposed to be here to help after all. Muri takes  the chance to finally explain why she bought him   here: once she finds a way to make a stronger  toxin, he needs to take it back to the past   to mass produce it and get it ready for when the  aliens arrive. That's why she's working like crazy   to finish tonight, she needs to be done before  he leaves. Dan doesn't want to leave Muri behind   to her death, but Muri points out she called  him because she's the only one she can trust.   At that moment, the machine finally finishes a  toxin with a 100% match for a female whitespike,   but it's also the moment the alien wakes up and  calls for her protectors. As a bunch of male   aliens arrives to attack the platform, Dan thinks  they should kill the female to stop the attack,   but Muri points out they only have one sample  of the toxin and it could help more in the past.   While the soldiers begin defending the platform  the best they can and many aliens crash into the   labs, Muri and Dan run around the platform to try  to make it to the helipad where Dan should be for   the timejump, which will happen in a few minutes.  The two of them shoot lots of aliens on the way,   yet Muri still gets hit by a spike. Dan tries to  help her walk, but she's in too much pain, and the   platform is about to go down because the aliens  crashed a ship against it. Muri apologizes for   being cold to Dan and after saying she loves him,  she gives him the toxin, urging him to take it   back to save everyone. Suddenly an alien shows up  and drags Muri down with it, causing Dan to jump   after her to save her. However that's the moment  when the time machine activates, and the Timelink   takes Dan, Dorian, Charlie, and the others back  to the past. Thankfully the toxin is safe in Dan's   hand and the vial doesn't break. Charlie is fine,  but he confesses he stayed hidden like a coward.   Dan tells Hart they need to mass-produce the toxin  and send it to the future to kill all the aliens,   but Hart has bad news: the time machine isn't  working anymore, probably because the aliens on   the oil platform have destroyed the other end of  it. They can't go back ever again, meaning it's   all over. Dan returns home and barely can believe  he gets to be with his family again, he's still in   shock because of everything he went through. At  night he can't sleep, and he keeps visiting Muri   to confirm she's alive. When Emmy checks on him,  Dan shares what happened with older Muri, and he's   still determined to find a solution to all this.  Emmy helps him see the facts they have: they know   the aliens attack Russia in 2048, but nobody sees  the ships arrive. Maybe that's the year they start   moving, but they arrive before, and nobody notices  because it's in the middle of a frozen nowhere in   Russia. So they need to start looking at years  before that. The next day, Dan immediately jumps   into action. He visits Dorian and convinces him  this isn't over yet, then they take Dorian's   trophy claw to the lab Charlie works at. Charlie  confirms there's sediment on the claw that looks   like volcanic ash that came from either China or  Korea. They don't understand how Asian ash can end   up in Russia, meaning they need to ask a volcano  expert. Next Dan goes to see his student Martin,   who explains there was a huge volcanic eruption in  Asia thousands of years ago, if the ash was blown   by the wind it could've gotten caught in Russian  waters, which eventually became ice. This means   the creatures have always been here on Earth,  frozen under hundreds of layers of ice, that's   why they never saw the ships arrive. The reason  why they wake up in 2048 is that's when climate   change finally finishes melting all the polar ice.  They take this theory to the government, but since   they don't have any proof, they aren't given the  resources to find the alien nest. They need to do   this the illegal way, and Dan knows just the right  person: his father James, who has been living off   the grid for years and has his own plane. Hearing  Dan say "I need your help" convinces James to help   with the mission, no matter how crazy it sounds.  Dan also gets in contact with Hart, who worked   with Muri in the future and is ready to finish  her beloved leader's mission. Hart brings a few   soldiers with her, plus plenty of weapons and some  copies of the toxin. The team travels to Russia,   and Charlie promises this time he won't hide. When  they make it to the Academy of Sciences Glacier,   they begin looking around the area for signs of  anything strange. They stop when they discover   their machines are going crazy because there's  a weird magnetic field surrounding them. Using   lots of explosives, the team opens a hole in the  ground and enters an ancient cavern, where they   finally find the frozen spaceship. Dan points out  that entering the ship is extremely dangerous and   they could go tell the government they've found  proof, but everyone agrees the government has   been useless and it's up to them to make things  right. They use a chainsaw to cut through the ice   and the team enters the ship while leaving  Charlie and James outside in case something   tries to escape. The group reaches the cockpit  and realizes this is a crash site, the aliens   never intended Earth to be their destination.  Surprisingly the body of the pilot isn't a   whitespike. They go into another room and find  the actual whitespikes inside a series of biopods,   which makes them realize they're cargo: they're  bioengineered creatures that were used by the   pilot's alien race as weapons to colonize other  planets. The team begins injecting the pods with   the toxin and watches the whitespikes wriggling  in pain, confirming the toxin kills them. However   their cries also wake up the aliens that haven't  been injected yet, causing them to break their   pods and attack. The team shoots as many as they  can, but some of them manage to escape. Dorian   points out they have no choice but to blow up the  ship, so he gives Dan his claw and accepts to stay   behind to activate the bomb once everyone is out.  James begins shooting at the aliens that escape,   but Charlie's weapon gets stuck and he begins  killing the creatures with the chainsaw. Dan   makes it outside and warns them to run away while  Hart and the others are swarmed by a huge colony   of aliens. Not being able to wait anymore, Dorian  makes the bomb explode, bringing everyone creature   down with him and dying on his terms like he  wanted. Dan, Charlie, and James get out of the   cavern before the explosion hits them, but James  explains he saw an alien with a red belly escape.   Dan realizes that's the female, so they split up  to go after her. The queen finds one of them and   attacks, but it turns out it's a snowman covered  in clothes that James put up as a trap. When the   queen goes after him instead, Dan shows up to hit  her with his snowmobile. Then father and son being   shooting together until they push the queen off  the edge of the cliff. They know she isn't dead   yet though and get ready for her return. When the  queen attacks again, she pushes them to separate   them, then shoots a spike at Dan before going  after him. Dan uses that same spike to stab her   mouth and James uses the chance to hit her with an  axe, leaving her blind. The queen begins thrashing   around in desperation and Dan takes the chance to  inject the toxin into her leg. However the queen   removes that leg so the toxin can't spread in her  body. When the queen tries to go after Dan, he   gets a grenade ready to bring her down with him.  But at that moment, James raises his wounded hand   to make the alien smell his blood and go after him  instead. Dan refuses to lose his father after they   reunited, so he jumps on the queen and slices her  neck with Dorian's claw. After hitting her a few   more times, he takes out the last vial of toxin  and inserts it in her mouth before kicking her   down the cliff again. The queen crashes against  a big rock and finally dies. The next day,   newscasts all over the world report an explosion  in Russia that killed a bunch of aliens, and   the government tries to take credit for it. Dan  returns home and reunites with his family, finally   allowing James to meet his granddaughter. Now  they can all work together for a better future.