Chloe Grace Moretz. The bottom of a Flying Fortress. The middle of World War 2. A mysterious “Shadow” lurking in the clouds. If that doesn’t inspire some sort of intrigue, allow me to delve deeper into Roseanne Liang’s bombastic war thriller.
Liang is a Chinese-New Zealand filmmaker coming straight out of Auckland with her second feature film after the local success of 2011’s My Wedding and Other Secrets, and the freshness of a commanding female presence from that part of the world is met head on as the film begins on a runway of a New Zealand Air Base.
Who we start with though is more important. Maude Garrett, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, is a flight officer with the RAF, with her arm in a sling and a Top Secret mission from the highest above and a radio bag with a precious cargo specified in the order as “confidential” and :not to be opened.”
Upon boarding The Fool’s Errand, a B-17 Flying Fortress headed on it’s own mission across the Pacific, Garrett is met with a crew of foul-mouthed characteristically misogynistic airmen who want nothing to do with her or her cargo. Their solution is to lock her into the belly turret underneath the plane, a small cramped globe made of plastic that overlooks a serene drop to your death.
It’s this premise, based off an original screenplay by Max Landis, that Liang builds off of and has, as you can imagine, a lot of fun with.
What’s worth mentioning first is the aesthetic of the film. The visuals are mostly coming from the turret, and the only time we see anyone but Maude is when she first boards the plane. The dialogue is all over radio, so we’re trapped in the turret along the whole ride. Although when the shit starts hitting the fan (and trust me it does), the aesthetic morphs into what budget constraints can only describe as B-Movie level effects and logic mixed in together. This is not a negative point, however, as the direction of Liang allows for the bombastic nature of the film to feel authentic within the world that’s built here.
That is in partial fact to the “villain” of this film. That titular “Shadow in the Cloud” comes something sinister and unpredictable, yet could be argued as underused. The original draft of the screenplay includes a lot more of it, and I can’t help but feel it’s a missed opportunity to use it as a greater metaphor for Maude’s character, as was intended in the script. However, it is the thing that keeps bringing shock, horror and awe to the audience as we try to escape the hellish nightmare scenario we are locked into.
The heartbeat of the film is Moretz, whose performance is meant to be one of character and strength, and she plays brilliantly here. A typical strap-a-movie-to-your-back single location thriller is a challenge that few actors have managed to conquer, and she does wonderfully here as a new-found feminist icon with a don’t fuck with me attitude.
Shadow In The Cloud’s biggest fault, however, is the way it reveals its secrets. There are so many to choose from off the jump: who is Maude Garrett? Why is she on this flight? What’s in the Radio Bag? What the fuck was that Shadow?! The answers here are all satisfactory in principle, and they work especially well in the screenplay, but there feels like a lot of tension is lost in some of those moments which can again be attributed to the B-Movie aesthetic. It can also be put down to the direction and rewrites, as it is only Liang’s second feature, and with not a lot of physical space to move one could understand the struggle of trying to pay off those big moments.
All in all, Shadow In The Cloud is an incredibly fun time at the movies. Bring friends and a massive bucket of popcorn, because this is a time to be had in the middle of this unforgiving pandemic. Moretz is fantastic, Liang’s love of genre shines through (hell, so did mine, there’s a moment in here so insane I teared up at the sight of it) and the supporting cast all give great performances to keep us and Maude firmly glued to our seats.
Whatever Roseanne Liang and Chloe Grace Moretz do next, I’m there.
Shadow In The Cloud is in cinemas now. For more, watch the trailer below (although I wouldn’t because as most good trailers do, it spoils a lot of the fun):
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