In a world obsessed with nostalgia and the past, Watch The Skies is a movie that evokes those feelings without feeling cheap. It is set in Sweden in the 1990s but it doesn’t weaponize that nostalgia. The film is the story of Denise, a rebellious teenager who’s hellbent on finding her missing father. It turns out that her father was abducted by aliens and she joins forces with a group of UFO hunters to find him. The adventure that follows tests all of their love of the craft, their friendships, and asks the question of what a family really is.
It stars Inez Dahl Torhaug as Denise, Jesper Barkselius as Lennart, Sara Shirpey as Tomi, Eva Melander as Kicki, Hakan Ehn as Gunnar, Isabelle Kyed as Tona, Mathias Lithner as Mats, Niklas Kvarnbo Jonsson as Karl, and Oscar Toringe as Uno. Denise seemingly takes advantage of this group of UFO hunters led by Lennart to use them to find her missing father.
The group of UFO hunters and their dynamics are one of the better parts of the film. They act like an after-school group, but it’s all adults. How Denise and the rest of them interact with one another is a highlight.
A UFO-Less UFO Film With Heart
As it goes on Watch The Skies morphs into this sort of Amblin-era adventure mixed with the stylings of Close Encounters. The action here is more modern feeling with plenty of tense moments like car crashes, a particularly thrilling section involving the police and a car pretending to be from another world, and the final section of the film where all the science meets up to tie the film together.
Watch The Skies succeeds where a lot of nostalgia-driven films fail because it’s paying homage but not completely copying the homework of movies before it. There are lots of heartfelt moments involving what it means to be a family, but they don’t feel like straight-up ripped off from Spielberg or other 80s movies.
Everything here feels genuine from a storytelling and performance standpoint. It’s down to Earth (all puns intended). It’s a very charming and authentic feeling from the top down.
From the effects to the soundtrack, Watch The Skies does a good job of replicating the time period and that sort of warm feeling that movies give you.
A Movie That Doesn’t Get Made These Days
Director Victor Dannell brings us a movie that used to be commonplace in an earlier time, but we don’t get too much of anymore. It’s heartfelt, genuine, and all about people who aren’t extraordinary trying to do extraordinary things. The UFO Sweden team are a bunch of curious people wondering about the world out there and trying their best.
There are so many different Stranger Things-copies out there, but this film yearns for not only a different time period, but a different type of nostalgia. Not for the excess of the 1980s but the curiosity and easy-going vibes of the 90s. The relationship between Lennart and Denise is what gives the film its charm. A girl trying to find her father ends up finding something even more special, a family.
Watch The Skies is in theaters now.
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