Given its title, should potential viewers expect 2022’s Watch the Skies to involve possible alien visitations? Yes, as the film pursues that angle.

Set in Sweden circa 1996, the father (Oscar Töringe) of teenaged Denise (Inez Dahl Torhaug) goes missing. She believes extraterrestrial critters took him.

This leads her to meet a group of like-minded individuals who chase flying saucers under the banner “UFO Sweden”. With their assistance, Denise attempts to find out what happened to her dad.

As a kid in the 1970s, I grew up in the golden age of UFO sightings. Going all the way back to at least 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind - and probably earlier – I found stories of potential alien encounters intriguing.

Given that Watch the Skies existed as the original title to Close Encounters, this 2022 Swedish film owes a clear debt to Spielberg. Unfortunately, the end product doesn’t ever become more than mildly interesting.

At its core, Skies comes with a pretty well-trodden narrative. We get a group of independent truth-seekers who battle against governmental cover-ups to find out the facts.

And of course, we get a colorful group of independent truth-seekers, as most members of UFO Sweden prove quirky. Leader Lennart Svahn (Jesper Barkselius) seems more skeptical and grounded, especially since he becomes a surrogate father figure for Denise.

Unoriginal as the movie’s concepts may seem, that doesn’t doom it to failure. If I restricted my viewing pleasure to totally inventive films, I’d hardly ever watch anything.

Nothing here actually dooms Skies anyway. It provides a perfectly serviceable mix of action and intrigue.

Unfortunately, Skies just never rises above that level, partly due to running time. While 117 minutes doesn’t seem excessive in a vacuum, this particular story simply lacks the needed content to fill that space.

As such, Skies can dawdle and drag. It takes much too long to get where it needs to go and it doesn’t use these minutes well in terms of how it explores plot and develops characters.

Sure, Denise and Lennart get more exposition than the rest, but the movie still doesn’t make them especially rich. They exist mainly as archetypes who don’t grow much beyond that.

If Skies provided a more dynamic narrative, this would matter less. Instead, the tale progresses slowly and never cranks into a higher gear.

Again, none of this makes Skies an actual bad film, as it maintains a moderate level of involvement as it goes. It just never turns into anything better.

Watch the Skies appears in an aspect ratio of 2.39:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Expect a solid presentation here.

Sharpness satisfied most of the time. A few shots seemed a wee bit soft, but not to a substantial degree, so most of the movie looked accurate and well-defined.

No shimmering or jaggies occurred. In addition, I witnessed no edge haloes or print flaws.

Apparently Hollywood Standard Orange and Teal is also Swedish Standard Orange and Teal, as those cliché tones dominated the film’s palette, albeit with more of a true blue cast than usual. The transfer replicated the hues in an appropriate manner.

Blacks seemed deep and tight, while low-light shots demonstrated good clarity. The image seemed pleasing.

I also felt happy with the solid DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack of Skies. The mix offered plenty of opportunities for lively auditory information, and it took good advantage of these.

The more action-oriented scenes used all the channels in a vivid manner that occupied the speakers with appealing action. These elements gave the mix real heft and impact,

Audio quality was also positive. Music sounded lively and full, while effects delivered accurate material. Those elements showed nice clarity and kick, with tight low-end.

Speech was always distinctive and concise, too. This mix worked well for the film.

Note that Blu-ray includes the film via two separate DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtracks, though unusually, the English dub gives us an altered version. As discussed in the disc’s supplements, the producers used face replacement techniques for the English presentation, so this means we get the Swedish original appears only as a “bonus feature”.

Both seem to be identical other than the languages used and the altered facial visuals. The Swedish cut does last one second longer, though.

In any case, both offered similar audio quality. The differences stemmed from the looped dialogue and the way the visual techniques altered the actors’ performances.

On one hand, the replacements seem surprisingly convincing, though not wholly so. The biggest issue came from the way that mouths simply didn’t usually open as much as one would expect in real life, so something felt a little off.

But not as much as I anticipated. Really, if I didn’t inspect the movie with an eye out for flaws, I’d probably not have noticed these anomalies too often.

However, the revoiced performances didn’t connect well with the altered mouth movements. Though the English version used the original actors, the lines always “felt looped” and they failed to blend smoothly.

The actors’ dubbed work also simply wasn’t as good as their original Swedish takes. Those felt more honest and realistic, so the English material tended to come across as a bit wooden.

I did think the mouth replacement techniques allowed the English presentation to fare better than most dubs of foreign language flicks. However, some of the same problems that’ve dogged looped movies for years remained here so I preferred the original Swedish version.

A smattering of extras fill out the disc, and with Filmmaker Testimonial, we find a two-minute, 54-second reel. It involves producers Olle Tholen and Albin Pettersson, writer/director Victor Danell, Flawless Films co-founder/CEO Scott Mann and actors Inez Dahl Torhaug and Jesper Barkselius.

We learn how the producers used CG technology to not just replace the Swedish dialogue but to also replace the actors’ faces to make the English lines match their mouths. Though the topic itself seems intriguing, “Testimonial” feels more like an ad for the techniques than anything substantial.

The Real UFO Sweden gives us featurette that spans two minutes, 26 seconds. It brings comments from Pettersson, Danell, Barkselius, UFO Sweden president Clas Svahn, and AFU co-founder Anders Liljegren.

As expected, the program looks at the group of UFO hunters who inspired Skies. The clip seems too superficial to tell us much of value.

The disc opens with an ad for Tatami. We also get a trailer for Skies and a “Sizzle Reel” for releases from Flawless Films.

A new exploration of alien phenomenon, Watch the Skies doesn’t find much new to say. While it keeps us moderately invested as it goes, the end result simply fails to click in a dynamic manner. The Blu-ray comes with strong picture and audio bit it lacks useful supplements. I’ve certainly seen worse sci-fi movies but this one nonetheless fails to really connect.