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Shadow in the Clouds Sticks a Bold Premise in a Limited Space


Shadow in the Clouds is a film wearing a lot of hats. It is an action movie and a horror movie and a creature feature and a revenge flick and a war film and a feminist drama and so many other things rolled into one. To say it is ambitious is an understatement, it is determined to carve out its own unique niche in the realm of weird genre cinema, an ideal film for TIFF’s Midnight Madness label where it premiered this past week. It is the first international feature from New Zealand director Roseanne Liang, from a script that was (we should be upfront about) originally written by the disgraced Max Landis -though heavily rewritten by Liang herself much to the movies’ benefit as well as its’ P.R. (Landis has always been a terrible writer). She definitely has a love for the material though, and the message, pulling it out of its’ gimmicky roots. She may even be following in the footsteps of another Kiwi filmmaker once taken with a gonzo taste in horror -a Bad Taste, even.
And yet for its bonkers confluence of elements and Liangs’ clear enjoyment of it, Shadow in the Clouds rarely seems to take full advantage of its premise, and until the last act, resists embracing it much at all. In fact, most of the film takes place in the claustrophobic turret that Chloë Grace Moretz’s Maude Garrett is confined to when she joins the flight compliment of a B-17 fighter jet with classified cargo at the last minute on a midnight haul.
A lot of the plot happens in there, through Maude interacting with the male flight crew over the radio as strange things begin taking effect in and around the aircraft. From the moment she comes aboard she is the target of an onslaught of sexual harassment, and her dealing with it from a space of containment is the driving theme of the film for its first hour. It’s a conscious and apt metaphor for the everyday misogyny women have to deal with in the workplace, complete with male colleagues “mansplaining” and condescending to her, and refusing to take seriously her concerns or emotions when they’re raised. Even her achievements they turn into a device of ego-stroking machismo. The entrapment forces the audience to empathize with her and the bullshit she has to contend with from men far less intelligent and capable than her. It’s really striking and pertinent, and most likely did not exist in the Landis draft. And I think it was a mistake.
Or at least an aspect of the movie that could have been worked differently. I understand why Liang decided to structure the movie like this, make the male characters into only obnoxious voices wildly abusing their power over Maude. But the genre side of things, the monster component of the story, is inhibited by this choice. The first time Maude sees a sign of the gremlin and tries warning the crew to no avail, there’s some adequate suspense developed, but it turns into a repetitive exercise. She sees the creature or an enemy plane, tries warning the crew, they don’t listen. The horror is muted, it becomes merely a retread of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, but with a competent, frustrated Moretz in place of a hysterical William Shatner. Her colleagues but for two interchangeable guys who are kinder to her, played by Benedict Wall and Nick Robinson, have no agency worth caring about when the carnage hits, and even less so when they’re merely describing terror happening off-screen as a substitute for a horrifying Alien-like situation. That feeling of confinement and isolation is translated perhaps too well -we share in Maude’s frustration of being stuck, but for different reasons. There’s only so much visually that can be articulated in such a cramped space.
In addition to this is a twist that Maude’s actions suddenly revolve around that doesn’t diminish the wartime feminist theme by any means, but certainly expresses it through a less interesting, far more conventional lens -though the movie does eventually have some fun with it. But it would be nice for a movie like this to follow a womans’ fight for herself and her own autonomy.
It takes a long time for the action momentum to kick in, but when it does it is suitably thrilling.  Liang does a decent job subtly establishing the geography of the aircraft early on so when it comes time for an elaborate action set-piece within, there are palpable stakes and a visual understanding conveyed of the environment. It’s also just really high-octane and creative. Here the camera tends more to long takes and Moretz really gets to exercise her Rosie the Riveter fortitude and bravado. The tension is amped up here too, beginning with a great sequence that is merely Maude getting out of the turret. From here to the end, the film maintains an urgency, as though making up for lost time, and shows its’ true colours as a wacky horror-action flick. In spite of whatever happens to the plane and crew, it ends on an image of triumph, albeit following a bizarre anti-climax.
And it’s quite a ride. But I wish Shadow in the Clouds was more cohesive. It is essentially two movies, one a claustrophobic character study and interrogation of normalized sexual harassment, the other a deranged creature feature with badass woman action movie overtones; and I think each works against the other. Individually they are effective enough. But the monster suspense stuff renders the turret constraining, and the serious confrontation of workplace misogyny leaves the over-the-top gremlin attack comparatively shallow. Liang did some good work here, as did Moretz, and she’s got a certain flare evident in a number of scenes and choices outside the turret that promise greater things. But Shadow in the Clouds, for its’ deliberately weird and exciting premise, could have been something much more.

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