PLOT: 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.
REVIEW: Artificial Intelligence is always going to be controversial when used in place of human beings, but I’d argue there are times when it feels like the logical next step. Why have a bunch of people waste time rotoscoping or replacing mouths when AI can do it, and do it even better? It’s easy to judge a massive film studio, but independents are doing what they can to get their films made. Watch The Skies is a Swedish movie that uses AI to digitally replace mouths to make the English dub seamless. And this is the kind of AI that I can get behind: it doesn’t change the performances, instead giving the film a chance to be seen by a wider audience. Because the harsh reality is that general audiences don’t like subtitles and prefer watching content in their own language. And dubbing can be pretty rough. So this seems like a logical usage of the technology. But what about the film itself?
Watch the Skies follows Denise, a teenager who thinks her father was abducted by aliens. She joins up with a UFO club that’s filled with “lovable freaks” to try and hunt down her missing father. The involvement of UFOs means there are some grander organizations who are also on the same hunt. I’ll always root against corporations and the government, so the narrative immediately gives you a clear set of heroes and villains. Denise is headstrong but still likable, with Inez Dahl Torhaug really managing to strike an emotional chord through her. The whole UFO club is filled with fun personalities, making them easy to root for. Though I absolutely hated Gunnar; the old man who refuses change and wants to control everyone in the UFO club. It’s intentional, but I wanted to see more comeuppance for his character.
I was blown away with the technical prowess of Watch the Skies. The team at Crazy Pictures is ridiculously talented and are able to pull off just about anything. The stunts are masterfully handled, like a car accident, taking place entirely inside and looking both visceral and beautiful. Throwing a car through a barn has never looked better. And often, with these more grounded sci-fi ventures, they can lose any grounding once a more extraterrestrial element is introduced. Yet they avoid that here, by showing just enough, and keeping things more abstract when they need to be.
The song “Forever Young” by Alphaville gets prominent placement in the story, and it works so well, both with the theme of the film and also the song helps elevate its scenes. I’m sure it cost a pretty penny, but it shows where spending money in licensing can really help improve the overall quality of the film.
Now I’m not going to pretend that the mouth replacement is completely seamless. But the actual effect itself works pretty well 90% of the time. Especially when the alternative is a dub that feels completely disconnected from the reality of the scene. It’s more of an issue that the performance doesn’t exactly match the actor, like many dubs. And it seems like there were times when the mouth isn’t super visible, so they neglected to do the process to them.
Watch the Skies is a great look at UFOs in a respectfully realistic way. The narrative never goes too overboard and even makes it so skeptics can have a good time with it. The ending enters Sunshine territory of “You’re either going to be on board or it’s going to lose you,” and thankfully, I was fully onboard. Rarely am I blown away by a film to the degree where I don’t know how they pulled off certain effects. But I constantly found myself befuddled by how much they were able to accomplish here. Truly a remarkable cinematic feat. Here’s hoping that the AI element doesn’t become the entire narrative.
