Shadow in the Cloud Is Over-the-Top Fun
While this action/horror film won’t win any awards; if you suspend belief you’re in for a thrilling ride.
Last year was not a great year for anybody — as we all know.
One way that stress really affected me was my concentration. Reading and movies were pretty much out of the picture because I couldn’t focus for more than a 30-minute episode.
This means my husband and I rewatched New Girl (2011–2018) for the fifth time, but didn’t see any of the straight-to-streaming movies that were released during that period.
Because of that, I missed any and all discussion that might have happened regarding Shadow in the Cloud (2020). But when it showed up in my Hulu feed, I decided to give it a shot. It looked exactly like the over-the-top kind of action film I love to watch.
Right from the start, we are inserted into an offbeat world. Maude Garret (Chloë Grace Moretz) walks onto a dark, foggy landing strip looking for a plane, The Fool’s Errand. Lights and shapes swirl in the nearly pitch black, so we are not entirely sure if what we are seeing in the fog is real.
Once Maude boards, she is met with a ton of hostility and not a little harassment, and she is placed in the ball turret away from the rest of the crew.
It quickly becomes apparent that Maude is hiding something, but it’s not until the script takes a supernatural twist that things really pick up.
It’s really hard for me to talk about this movie without falling into spoiler territory — which I don’t want to do — but there definitely are some deeper themes a lot of people seem to be missing.
No one should expect Shadow in the Cloud to win any awards. It’s not that kind of movie — not that there should be “that kind of movie,” but we all know genre films never receive much respect.
That said, the cast of this film — led by Moretz — does phenomenal work. After a brief and less-than-positive introduction, most of the cast is off screen and voice only for the first act of the movie.
Nearly all of the early characterization is accomplished by voice and dialogue — no easy feat!
Shadow in the Cloud falls strictly into the female empowerment category and, to a certain extent, the men in this film are fairly “one note” (although there is some character growth at the end of the film). They are not the best representation of soldiers, but there are lots of men like them in the world.
As with all action films, one needs to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, otherwise you are going to spend the whole movie nitpicking and that’s no fun for anyone.
I have seen some complaints about the believability of some of the stunts portrayed in this film, but if Bruce Willis can step out of a spinning vehicle and keep shooting, à la RED (2010), then I don’t see why Moretz isn’t allowed to defy gravity and physics as well.
One aspect of the film that was truly phenomenal was its scoring; the synth-heavy themes feel very reminiscent of Stranger Things (2016). While it might not fit the era in which the movie is set, the pulsing rhythms mark Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper as a genius.
The music fits the movie’s tone perfectly and helps to keep the pace blazing forward. This soundtrack has been the only thing streaming on my Spotify account since yesterday.
I’ve never seen anything else directed by Rosanne Liang (who also co-wrote the script), but I will keep an eye on her career, because while Shadow in the Cloud is not a perfect movie, it’s a ton of fun.
