Beautifully shot by Director Roseanne Liang and DP Kit Fraser, “Shadow in the Cloud” means to entertain us, despite its outrageous script. It revels in its loony blend of genres by never taking itself too seriously.
Set during the second world war, Max Landis’ script, a genre mash-up of pulp, action, and horror, has a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force pilot (Chloë Grace Moretz, having a blast) taking a ride on-board a bomber fighter jet filled with misogynist pilots. She’s carrying a mysterious and precious cargo marked as classified information. The crew relegates her to sit in the ball of the turret, which is located near the bell of the plane. That’s where she starts noticing a threatening presence around her — did she just see a Gremlin circling the bomber? Of course, the wise-ass, sexist pilots don’t believe her, little do they know that their lives are now in total danger.
The first half of “Shadow in the Cloud” is where the film hits its sourest notes. That’s when Moretz is in the gun turret and can only communicate with the crew via radio. The unseen band of ragtag pilots, we can only hear them through radio, spew sexist remarks at her, while she sits there warning them, to no avail, about the threat at hand. The obscenely sexist remarks are a bit too much — fine, we get it, she’s a woman, but she’s being treated by these 2D cardboard characters with the kind of misogynistic rhetoric that feels a tad too over-the-top and forced. At some point, you just want to get out of the frathouse.
It’s a good thing then that once Moretz’s character escapes the gun turret, things start to rev up. While the characters remain painfully paper-thin, Liang’s well-executed action keeps things lively, the last 40 or so minutes of the film feels like an extended Indian Jones sequence with Moretz trying to duck obstacle after obstacle.
Landis’ screenplay bears eerie resemblances to the “Twilight Zone” episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Nothing wrong with that, B-movies tend to steal plot devices from an incalculable amount of sources and, if that Twilight episode has now slightly aged due to a constrained lack of modern effects, Liang’s film compensates by using modern-day effects, which are shot beautifully with neon colors via Fraser’s lenses.
I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of looking forward to the “Michael” sequel. Whether Vantoine directs it or John Logan, it doesn’t matter—it’s an inevitable sh*tshow that will result from its making and release.