A low-budget UFO film makes waves with its AI-driven voice syncing, though its plot struggles to lift off the ground.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
The low-budget Swedish entry “Watch the Skies” appears to take its name from Christian Nyby’s 1951 science-fiction classic “The Thing from Another World ” and its final cautionary warning: “Keep watching the skies.”
But what’s most noteworthy about this humble tale of a Swedish girl who believes that her missing father was abducted by a UFO is that it was dubbed using the Artificial Intelligence technique “Flawless Immersive Dubbing” that manipulates the voices and faces of the actors and makes it look like they are speaking English. It’s a more evolved form of the old Syncro-Vox animated technique, matching humans’ tongues and lips with drawn, mask-like faces (Conan O’Brien fans know what I’m talking about). With this new technique, there is correct synchronization between the words coming out of the actors’ mouths and how their faces move.
Directed, written, produced, dubbed and more by the Swedish film collective known as Crazy Pictures, “Watch the Skies” is a more naive, at times not quite as plausible version of such alien contact classics as “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Its heroine Denise (Inez Dahl Torhaug) is a teenage rebel who is convinced that her UFO-chasing dad, who nicknamed her “Sputnik,” was indeed abducted, although she has no proof. But her hope is rekindled after an old Saab 90 flies through the roof of a barn and crashes inside. Convinced that it is her dad’s car, Denise rushes on her motorbike and hears one of her dad’s favorite songs playing on a tape.
Denise then teams up with her father’s old band of basement-dwelling, misfit UFO chasers known as UFO Sweden. This includes Lennart Svahn (Jesper Barkselius), a former research specialist for the government agency HMSI, who is thrown out for stealing records, the amiable, chain-smoking Tona (Isabelle Kyed) and the aged Gunnar (Hakan Ehn), who is agitated at the prospect of acting illegally. Like storm chasers and troll hunters, these UFO-obsessed weirdos are humanized and made relatable by their eccentricities. On assignment to study the night sky, UFO Sweden encounters a fenced-off area in the woods equipped with the latest high-tech equipment. Lennart has an encounter with HMSI official Kicki (Eva Melander), who played a role in getting him fired. Also in the mix is young police officer Tomi (Sara Shirpey), who tries unsuccessfully to help Denise escape trouble.
Hacker Denise fires up her brand-new Windows 95. The members of UFO Sweden keep talking about “the truth.” The action is like an “X Files” episode. Denise and her cohorts take a giant magnet and a truck with a powerful winch to a lake to “fish” for a UFO. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
The AI dubbing technique works well enough and is certainly superior to the old, frequently mocked mismatched mouth-and-dialogue techniques. (Call me crazy, but I enjoy listening to a foreign language being spoken and reading subtitles. It’s a respectful and important part of the experience of a foreign-language film.)
Otherwise, films like “Watch the Skies” require more suspension of disbelief than some viewers are willing to give. The plot becomes notably monotonous several times. But the electronic score by Gustaf Spetz and Oskar Sollenberg keeps things moving along nicely. A bit involving a medieval cos-player lends the ending a nice Python-esque touch, recalling the Terry Gilliam classic “Time Bandits.” That old Saab finally becomes a kind of mothership, and while a light show concerning a particular “wormhole” is impressive in its minimalism, it (deliberately) obscures more than it illuminates.
‘Watch the Skies’
Rating: PG-13, violence, bloody images, profanity.
Cast: Inez Dahl Torhaug, Jesper Barkelius, Sara Shirpey
Director: Victor Danell
Writers: Danell, Jimmy Nivren Olsson
Running time: 116 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, AMC Liberty Tree Mall and other suburban theaters
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