Shadow in the Cloud is a 2020 New Zealand-American World War II action horror film directed by Roseanne Liang, from a screenplay by Liang and Max Landis, starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Taylor John Smith, Nick Robinson, Beulah Koale, and Callan Mulvey. Released digitally 31st January 2022 and on DVD 7th February 2022.
Synopsis
On a stormy night during World War II, a female pilot with top secret cargo talks her way on board a bomber plane about to take-off. The crass all-male crew reluctantly agrees, but their suspicions about her identity and the mysterious cargo quickly grow. Just then a shadow appears in the clouds – was it the incoming Japanese fleet? Or caused by some other sinister stowaway?
Review
Usually I like a good action or war film and when I first saw the trailer for Shadow in The Cloud it peaked my interest as from first glance it looked a combination of the two, a little sceptical of Chloe Grace Moretz as an action heroine but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
The main story of the film centres around Maude Garrett (played by Moretz) and how she tricks her way onto a fighter bomber carrying a precious albeit suspicious cargo, there are other characters on board but we don’t see these in any depth until the later parts of the film we mainly hear them over the comms. The different emotions Maude goes through shows different sides to the character as the deception begins to unravel the true character emerges. As a whole I found Moretz carries the film well and manages to pull off the action heroine lead role really well and keeps you guessing what will be the outcome.
The film itself is billed as a film with many twists and it’s not wrong, there are indeed many twists in the story but at times it becomes a knotted mess of storylines and you can quite easily lose your way. The whole plot line of the shadow that’s seen on the wing made by a mysterious being feels completely out of sync with the overall film as we are given little if any introduction to what it is or could be and personally I found they could’ve got rid of the whole “gremlins” story altogether and created a much better film without it.
As I said earlier I was quite sceptical of casting Chloe Grace Moretz as an action lead as I have only ever seen her in more light hearted roles but she definitely proved me wrong offering an emotionally driven performance that felt authentic and the action sequences were pulled off to a tee.
The film as a while took a while to get going but when it did I did enjoy the experience as I found that Roseanne Liang directing skills were perfectly placed to bring the film together in the latter stages pulling the lose ends together for a pretty good finale.
Verdict
Disjointed and sometimes hard to follow, Shadow in the Cloud has some great moments of action and comedy but doesn’t fully stick its landing.
⭐⭐⭐
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