A kind of mash-up of “Interstellar” and “Stranger Things,” the extraterrestrial coming-of-age sci-fi flick “Watch the Skies” is a passably enjoyable story about loss. It concerns Denise (a committed Inez Dahl Torhaug), a girl whose ufologist father went missing back in 1988 while searching for aliens. By 1996, Denise is a rebellious, tech-savvy teenager still searching for clues about her father’s disappearance when his former red car falls from an orange sky into a local barn. The unexplainable occurrence gives Denise hope, causing her to reach out to her father’s former club—UFO-Sweden—for help.
It’s commonplace at this point to see stories about sudden disappearances leaving emotional voids wide enough to be filled by tales of extraterrestrial abduction; they’ve spawned books, podcasts, reality television, and movies. And though “Watch the Skies,” directed by Victor Danell (credited as Crazy Pictures), claims to be derived from a unique source—it’s loosely based on an identical association whose moniker also inspired a documentary Danell watched—this film isn’t interested in putting a new spin on these yarns. That impulse, unfortunately, makes this admittedly slick film feel like more of the same rather than a distinctive adventure into the unknown.
Still, relying on a familiar mold isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker. It just requires characters that can conjure the inherent pathos such films engender. Unfortunately, “Watch the Skies” struggles on that front, too.
Denise is simply a deeply unlikable character whose maturation from selfishness to selflessness takes far too many obnoxious turns for us to care about her growth. That’s a serious fumble because she does possess some impressive traits: She can hack a keypad using a Game Boy, rides a killer motorcycle, and has an undaunted spirit. But her desire to find her father routinely puts others in enough foreseeable danger that it’s difficult to root for her.
See, there are plenty of endearing figures in “Watch the Skies” who are shoved to the sidelines in lieu of her journey. UFO-Sweden, for instance, is a distinctive crew of colorful characters: the punkish Töna (Isabelle Kyed), a fragile Karl (Niklas Kvarnbo Jönsson), and a supportive Mats (Mathias Lithner). But it’s only the bitter Gunnar (Håkan Ehn)—an almost unbelievably vile veteran member of the association—and Lennart (Jesper Barkselius), who move toward the center. It’s an initially hesitant Lennart who ultimately becomes Denise’s biggest ally, causing the pair to form a tenuous bond.
With Denise and Lennart serving as the leads, you’d expect the film to lean into a potential surrogate father-daughter relationship. But it doesn’t. Denise is far too single-minded to let anyone in, causing the relationship shared by the two characters never to organically develop, even as they both contend with their demons. Denise’s greatest obstacle is Tomi (Sara Shirpey), a cop and quasi-older-sister looking to protect Denise from the UFO group. On the other hand, Lennart is trying to evade the wrath of Kicki (Eva Melander), the SMHI head who had him fired and is now searching for weather-related data about extraterrestrials. Neither “villain” is particularly menacing (I’d even go so far as to say the film overly maligns Tomi), withdrawing any sense of tension from the adventure.
Everything in “Watch the Skies” is either overwrought or underdeveloped, including the dubbing carried out by SyncFlawless. I didn’t know any AI was used for the speech until the film’s end. While watching, however, I couldn’t shake the uncanny valley feeling that the technology usually brings. Something about the alignment of the face and voice threw me off in a way that even cartoonish dubbing doesn’t. On the other hand, the film’s score is indistinguishable from others of the same ilk, like “Stranger Things,” to the point that I nearly thought it was lifted from other sources.
The only appealing component to “Watch the Skies” is its mimicking of 1990s aesthetics. There’s almost a Polaroid patina to the colors here, where primary colors pop from the screen while the lighting remains evocatively hazy. Swift car chases lead to moments of Spielbergian wonder, inspiring these characters to open themselves to each other. The charm these instances engender causes you to wish more of this picture were simply a whimsical adventure that allowed for big bursts of intense emotion. “Watch the Skies,” fulfilling that desire in its visually transportive climax, gives it a sweet final note that nearly washes away the bitter taste of what came before. So much so that, even in the final seconds, I wanted to believe.
