Shadow in the Cloud: Airborne Chloë Grace Moretz fights misogyny and a murderous monster in this gonzo WW2-set Midnight Madness fave

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B

Under the circumstances of a virtual film festival during a pandemic, there were only three films in the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness series. Shadow in the Cloud was the category’s deserved People’s Choice winner.

A bonkers monster movie, with more than a little DNA from the classic Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Shadow in the Cloud takes the “gremlin” mythos back to its wartime source. And it gives Chloë Grace Moretz her most kick-ass role since, well, 2010’s Kick-Ass.

A determined Chloë Grace Moretz has a date with a monster aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress.

Director/co-writer Roseanne Liang, ironically, took a script from Max Landis (who’s been publicly accused of sexual assaults), and, by accounts, heavily reworked it into a rousing empowerment story. Certainly, the character Moretz plays here – better than the men at surviving a monster attack, while parrying the crudest boys-club insults – seems an unlikely product of a misogynist’s imagination.

Moretz plays Capt. Maude Garrett, a supposedly highly-ranked and determined British intelligence officer (her accent is not a strong suit) who shows up unannounced as a B-17 - with the portentous name “The Fool’s Errand - is being loaded in Auckland, New Zealand for a flight to Samoa in 1943. Purported General’s orders in hand, she insists on being allowed on board with classified cargo.

The plane’s name isn’t the only telegraphed signal of what is to come. Among many scene-setting clips is a 1943 Bugs Bunny cartoon, Falling Hare, in which Bugs battles a cute little varmint whose mission in life is to bring down planes.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Maude’s presence is openly resented by the Flying Fortress’s crew, most vocally by the captain, John Reeves (Callan Mulvey), who is unable on short notice to disprove her story and grudgingly agrees to take her along. Only Sgt. Walter Quaid (Taylor John Smith) shows her any courtesy.

As the plane takes off and the insults fly, she is deemed a distraction and confined to a gun turret, a “time out” meant to humiliate her. Instead it gives her agency as a gunner when Japanese planes show up, and direct physical contact when the creature begins its rampage, pulling apart the plane.

Narratively, it is literally the moment when Shadow in the Cloud truly becomes Moretz’s movie, given that she is in extended close-up while the rest of the cast spends much of the film reduced to voices on an intercom.

Much is preamble, including the distracting, overcooked melodrama that surrounds the truth about Maude’s precious cargo (which is put in Reeves’ care when she’s banished to the turret). But in the last third of the movie, Shadow in the Cloud fairly explodes as Moretz engages in gonzo action and nail-biting moments (including one on the outside of the plane in flight).

Effectively the Ripley of this flight, Moretz makes a good case – again - for her ability to work an action film. Shadow in the Cloud is a fun ride through enemy territory, both human and demonic, and Moretz wields her weaponry with aplomb. The result may not win any Oscars, but it is a B-film in the best sense.

Shadow in the Cloud. Written by Max Landis and Roseanne Liang. Directed by Roseanne Liang. Starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Taylor John Smith and Callan Mulvey. Available in select theatres and on VOD.