Another indie review for you, this time a Swedish movie – Watch the Skies. I saw the trailer recently and it looked good. I was looking forward to watching it, which makes a change these days.
Watch the Skies stars Inez Dahl Torhaug, Jesper Barkselius, Sara Shirpey, Eva Malander, Hakan Ehn, Isbella Kyed, Mathias Lithner, and Niklas Kvarnbo Jonsson. Victor Dannell is the director, who co-wrote with Jimmy Nirven Olsson. It is listed as being made in 2022.
The Story
I like a good UFO movie, ‘I want to believe’. The story for Watch the Skies is:
A rebellious teenager who believes her missing father was abducted by aliens joins forces with a quirky UFO club of endearing misfits. They embark on a high-stakes adventure that defies the law and challenges the very fabric of reality.
We open with a heist taking place in the late 1970s. A group called UFO Sweden are planning to steal some data about the weather. The group thinks that the weather is being affected by UFOs. Their plan goes well until an alarm is set off, and one of the group escapes with the data. He shows his young daughter the new information and thinks he’s found where the UFOs are centred. He heads there and is never seen again.
Jump forward, 16 odd years, and we meet up with the young girl, Denise (Torhaug), who’s now a rebellious teenager. She’s clever too; she can use her Game Boy to hack into security gates. This is done more in a ‘nostalgia’ way, and not a girl boss way. She’s always getting herself into trouble, but has a police woman friend, Tomi (Shirpey).
In a barn, somewhere in Sweden, something odd is going on. A farmer can’t make out what it is when a car comes flying through the barn wall. It seems the be the car that Denies’ dad disappeared in.
Denise meets up with UFO Sweden to help her track her dad down; she thinks he’s still alive, but the group figures he’s dead. The rest of the story is all about them looking for the dad, and what could be an alien encounter.
The Cast
As I said, I was really hopeful for Watch the Skies, but it has some issues; the biggest issue is the cast. I’m trying to be as nice as I can, but the acting is terrible. At first, I thought the movie was dubbed into English, which explained the bad acting. You know how some dubbing is just terrible, missing the emotion of the character? However, I found that everyone was talking in English.
I think the main issue was that English is not their native language. Looking up a few of the actors, pretty much all of their work has been in their native Swedish. Here, they have tried to do English, and it just doesn’t come over. It’s a real shame, as most of the story is pretty good, and I liked the characters. I really don’t like to say any of this, but I couldn’t help feel that if the movie were in Swedish, but then subtitled, it would have made a huge difference.
As I said, the characters are all interesting; they cover all the main dynamics of a group, but just not very well. There are gentle bits of humour, but most of the time, they completely miss the mark. It is a real shame.
The Writing
The other issue with Watch the Skies was the writing. Most of the time, things seem to happen because the story needs them to happen. Denise manages to break into the barn where her dad’s car has crashed. She manages to get in, take some stuff, steal a photo the police have taken, injure one cop, and get away. I expect this in the Keystone Cops, but I hope the Swedish police are better than this.
Because it’s set in the late 80s/early 90s, there are a couple of moments where technology takes over. I don’t remember wi-fi being a thing until the early 2000s. In Watch the Skies, there’s one point where there is a wireless laptop that seems to connect to the internet and print something without any issues. Not being funny, but there isn’t a laptop and printer in 2025 that can do that!
The police woman keeps saying that UFO Sweden should be shut down, but there’s no explanation for why. They don’t seem dangerous, apart from the heist at the beginning. They are just a group of people ‘looking for the truth’.
I’m not spoiling the third act, but the other major issue was the third act. I was hoping for an ending like Close Encounters; she finds her dad, there are aliens and spaceships. The third act is interesting, but it has nothing to do with aliens. Although it was interesting, it was a little disappointing.
Overall
I really wanted to like Watch the Skies, and there is a good movie in there, but it’s hidden behind some really bad acting and a story that just takes an odd turn.
If you put The X Files and Stranger Things into a blender, you would get Watch the Skies. It’s not as good as X Files or Stranger Things, but it does try, in a good way.
This movie was made in 2022, and I’m calling it an indie movie; it had a decent budget. Some of the effects, towards the end, are very impressive. They also drop a 200-foot-tall mast tower on some cars at one point, again, not a cheap thing to do.
As I said, if Watch the Skies were in its native language, I think it would have been a totally different movie. I’m guessing they are trying to appeal to the US audience, who, as we all know, cannot read subtitles. It seemed like everyone was focusing so much on what they were saying in English, they couldn’t focus on how they were saying it.
The bad acting, combined with a story that doesn’t seem to know where it wants to go, means the overall movie is a letdown. I’ll say it again, but it’s a real shame, as the trailer looked good, and better execution would have made an interesting movie. A generous 2-star out of 5, as it’s worth a watch, just for an interesting discussion afterwards about the ending.
Watch the Skies will be on in Showcase Cinemas from the 11th of July.
