A teenage girl (Inez Dahl Torhaug) defies her foster carers to team up with UFO investigators in Sweden. Watch the Skies implements AI technology to turn the original Swedish dialogue into English speech, and opens exclusively at Showcase Cinemas in the UK on 11th July.
It’s always a bit of a pleasant surprise when, once in a while, the aliens don’t make New York City their first port of call.
Watch the Skies is a Swedish film set in the 1980s and 1990s in and around the Swedish city of Norrköping, where the organisation ‘UFO Sweden’ investigates supernatural phenomena. More concerned with having enough cakes for coffee break than taking UFO reports seriously, the group, led by Lennart (Jesper Barkselius), is challenged by teenager Denise (Inez Dahl Torhaug) to investigate data she has acquired, which may prove that ‘we are not alone’. With plot contrivances to help them, the group of misfits set about to see what is going on.
The film doesn’t present itself as being extremely deep, and definitely does not have the darkness of something like The X Files, but there were a couple of moments towards the end which put me vaguely in mind of Contact, the 1997 Jodie Foster film. It would certainly be more suitable for family viewing.
It is a little difficult to comment on the performances in Watch the Skies, because what’s on screen is only partly that which the actors produced. This is because Watch The Skies is a film visually dubbed using AI technology. “The mouth movements of characters have been digitally altered to sync up with the English dubbing, making this a unique viewing experience”, the publicity tells us.
A unique viewing experience, it certainly is.
In the 60s, it was not uncommon for European collaborations to cast actors from a range of countries in films, few of whom actually spoke the language of the script. Dialogue would be dubbed afterwards, resulting in mouths moving out of sync with what was being said, and voices not always matching the actors. The technology to do anything different was not available, and adding subtitles here and there would have been extremely confusing.
And so in 2025, AI presents an alternative which Watch the Skies has grasped.
The ability to switch a film’s audio into a different language without having the voice/mouth mismatch immediately offers filmmakers the opportunity for a wider audience for their film, particularly if that film is aimed at younger viewers, or viewers who do not have the patience, ability, or willingness to read subtitles.
The issue is, if the technology isn’t absolutely perfect, then the viewer spends more time focussing on why it doesn’t work, instead of settling into the film. So Watch the Skies quickly turns into ‘Watch the Mouths’, as it’s just not quite right. Close, but no cigar.
Done effectively, it’s entirely possible that ‘visual dubbing’ could smooth out the strangeness of the mouth/voice mismatch. But even slight imperfections simply transport the viewer to Uncanny Valley territory.
Perhaps a less sensitive viewer might be able to overlook this, and enjoy a pleasant – if not earth-shattering – family film.
Watch the Skies will be available exclusively at Showcase Cinemas from 11th July 2025.
A teenage girl (Inez Dahl Torhaug) defies her foster carers to team up with UFO investigators in Sweden. Watch the Skies implements AI technology to turn the original Swedish dialogue into English speech, and opens exclusively at Showcase Cinemas in the UK on 11th July.
It’s always a bit of a pleasant surprise when, once in a while, the aliens don’t make New York City their first port of call.
Watch the Skies is a Swedish film set in the 1980s and 1990s in and around the Swedish city of Norrköping, where the organisation ‘UFO Sweden’ investigates supernatural phenomena. More concerned with having enough cakes for coffee break than taking UFO reports seriously, the group, led by Lennart (Jesper Barkselius), is challenged by teenager Denise (Inez Dahl Torhaug) to investigate data she has acquired, which may prove that ‘we are not alone’. With plot contrivances to help them, the group of misfits set about to see what is going on.
The film doesn’t present itself as being extremely deep, and definitely does not have the darkness of something like The X Files, but there were a couple of moments towards the end which put me vaguely in mind of Contact, the 1997 Jodie Foster film. It would certainly be more suitable for family viewing.
It is a little difficult to comment on the performances in Watch the Skies, because what’s on screen is only partly that which the actors produced. This is because Watch The Skies is a film visually dubbed using AI technology. “The mouth movements of characters have been digitally altered to sync up with the English dubbing, making this a unique viewing experience”, the publicity tells us.
A unique viewing experience, it certainly is.
In the 60s, it was not uncommon for European collaborations to cast actors from a range of countries in films, few of whom actually spoke the language of the script. Dialogue would be dubbed afterwards, resulting in mouths moving out of sync with what was being said, and voices not always matching the actors. The technology to do anything different was not available, and adding subtitles here and there would have been extremely confusing.
And so in 2025, AI presents an alternative which Watch the Skies has grasped.
The ability to switch a film’s audio into a different language without having the voice/mouth mismatch immediately offers filmmakers the opportunity for a wider audience for their film, particularly if that film is aimed at younger viewers, or viewers who do not have the patience, ability, or willingness to read subtitles.
The issue is, if the technology isn’t absolutely perfect, then the viewer spends more time focussing on why it doesn’t work, instead of settling into the film. So Watch the Skies quickly turns into ‘Watch the Mouths’, as it’s just not quite right. Close, but no cigar.
Done effectively, it’s entirely possible that ‘visual dubbing’ could smooth out the strangeness of the mouth/voice mismatch. But even slight imperfections simply transport the viewer to Uncanny Valley territory.
Perhaps a less sensitive viewer might be able to overlook this, and enjoy a pleasant – if not earth-shattering – family film.
Watch the Skies will be available exclusively at Showcase Cinemas from 11th July 2025.
Share this:
Like this:
Discover more from The Movie Isle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.