A pilot named Maude (Chloe Grace Moretz) boards an Allied plane during WWII carrying a top-secret package. Right away, she is bombarded by the rampant sexism from the flight crew. As the plane heads to its destination, she gets the suspicion they are not alone. Eventually, Maude comes to realize there is a gremlin aboard the plane with the intention of sabotaging the flight. Naturally, none of the men believe her until it’s too late, and it’s up to her to save the day and protect her precious cargo.
Shadow in the Cloud owes a heavy debt to the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Falling Hare”, Gremlins, and the Twilight Zone episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. There’s also a big chunk that kind of plays like a dramatized radio play as Moretz is locked inside of a machine gun turret for much of the picture and listens via headset to everything that’s happening aboard the plane. Even though the film is largely a hodgepodge, it is nevertheless an effective one. Sometimes, it’s a little silly. Sometimes, it’s a little dumb. However, Moretz’s performance grounds the ludicrous premise, and her character's tenacity will have you rooting for her throughout.
I really liked the propaganda cartoon that precedes the main feature that warns soldiers about gremlins. I have to wonder if this had been a Warner Brothers movie if they would’ve just used “Falling Hare” instead. No matter, as it’s pretty cool either way. One minor quibble is that the electronic score seems really out of place in a film set in the ‘40s. Fortunately, it’s used rather sparingly.
Shadow in the Cloud runs a lean eighty-three minutes. Director Roseanne Liang gets a lot of mileage out of the claustrophobic setting and milks the premise for all its worth. While some of the set pieces are ridiculous, they feel like a breath of fresh air coming on the heels of such a taut, sparse, and minimalistic first half. Even when things threaten to spin out of control, Liang still manages to keep ‘em flying.
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