Watch the Skies
It was in 1970 that UFO Sweden was established, a local group asking a question which had been raised with increasing regularity, not to mention a mixture of concern and wonder, over the previous decades with reports of “flying saucers” moving into the mainstream through the forties with the first modern sightings of “foo fighters” and flying saucers and onwards, brought to a head through that decade and the next with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Communion : Are we alone?
Their members sceptical, seeking evidence and corroboration, among their number astrophysicist Lennart Svahn, formerly of Sweden’s meteorological service until he was forced out in disgrace following an incident in 1988 where allowed the group access to restricted data, that incident also led to the disappearance of their former leader whose daughter Denise, eight years later, becomes convinced that he was in fact abducted by aliens whose interventions are signalled by disruptions to electrical equipment and weather systems
Directed by former visual effects artist Victor Danell under his moniker Crazy Pictures from a script co-written with Jimmy Nivrén Olsson, Watch the Skies, originally titled UFO Sweden, is perhaps a proposition more interesting for what it represents rather than what it is, the production dubbed into English, though with heavy Swedish accents intact, and the mouths of the actors digitally altered by the artificial intelligence firm Flawless to lip-synch the translated dialogue.
The process undeniably successful and impressive in practical terms but unable to shake the feel of Italian cinema of the sixties and seventies, shot silent with all sound added in ADR sessions, the discontinuity between the voices and faces is persistent and nagging, a proof of concept which might have been better demonstrated had the film it is employed in service of not been so noisy in its mediocrity underneath the starry skies, car chases and childhood betrayed by abandonment.
Starring Inez Dahl Torhaug as moped riding teenage tearaway jack-of-all-trades computer genius hacker Denise, Sara Shirpey as Tomi, the police officer who tries to protect her for reasons the script never bothers to explore and Jesper Barkselius as Lennart, his nemesis his former boss Kicki played with scheming delight by Eva Melander, Watch the Skies is so intent on the mad chase of improbable connections it never stops to consider whether any of it even makes sense, the process of groundbreaking science simply typing reams of data into a computer and drawing lines on a map of the local terrain.
Lacking the sense of mystery and wonder which made The Vast of Night so mesmerising or the complicated characters of Unidentified Objects with their need to connect and be understood, despite both being smaller productions they are better films, and metamorphosing from The X-Files to Interstellar the purloined ideas in Watch the Skies are lost in the unfunny antics of UFO Sweden, Denise’s leap of faith into believing and her acceptance into the ranks of basement dwelling cranks sold as an emotional catharsis when she would be better off running from them.
Watch the Skies will be released exclusively in Showcase cinemas from Friday 11th July
