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.