Review: Shadow In The Cloud

Image courtesy of Redbox Entertainment.

 Much like the recently overlooked - albeit uneven - "The Empty Man," Roseanne Liang's "Shadow in the Cloud" is an ambitious genre match-up that works for much of its running time, but contains enough moments that stumble for it to not quite be what one might call a "good" movie.

Unlike "The Empty Man," which is very long for a horror movie, Liang's film is surprisingly short - only about 75 minutes if you subtract the credit sequence set inspiringly to Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love." Its brevity means that the overabundance of exposition and genre switcheroos come at you pretty fast.

As the film opens, a young, mysterious woman named Maude (Chloe Grace Moretz) with a British accent boards a plane filled with soldiers from England, Scotland and the United States on an apparent mission during World War II. The plane is about to cross the ocean, and there's an uneasy feeling from the beginning when many of the men make unsettling comments toward Maude that might lead one to believe they're burgeoning rapists.

For about the first half of the picture, Maude is relegated to sitting in the plane's bottom turret, and much of the dialogue is centered around what exactly she's doing on the plane as it takes place over the intercom system. The men onboard the plane don't trust her, and her cause isn't helped by the package she's brought onto the plane that she claims is highly classified.

Oh yeah, there's another passenger on the plane who causes some trouble - a gremlin that Maude first spots on the plane's wing. She has difficulty getting the soldiers to believe her regarding its presence. "Shadow in the Cloud" vacillates between being a feminist World War II action movie - which is impressive that the filmmakers have managed to make it so, considering how its screenwriter has #MeToo accusations hanging over him - and a horror picture with a gruesome creature terrorizing a plane. 

For the most part, it's a pretty fun genre picture - that is, until the filmmakers decide to go overboard, starting with a sequence during which Maude must crawl out of the turret and chase the gremlin around the plane's exterior after the creature gets ahold of her secret package. The film remains slightly ridiculous right to the end, although a scene on the ground once the plane has landed packs an exciting punch.

The film's success often rides on Moretz, whose one-woman show during the film's first half is impressive. The special effects for a low budget film of this sort are also good, and despite its brief running time, it packs a lot in and remains entertaining. I could have done without some of the more over-the-top scenes, which threaten to throw the film off balance, but all in all this is a reasonably decent action-horror movie with a strong central performance and at least one twist you won't likely see coming.