In 'Shadow in the Cloud', a Female WW II Flight Officer Takes on Misogyny, Japanese Fighters Planes, and a Gremlin

Set during World War II, Shadow in the Cloud follows Maude Garrett (Chloë Grace Moretz), a female Flight Officer who has been given a top secret mission to deliver top secret package from Auckland, New Zealand to Samoa.  In order to fulfiller her mission, she hitches a ride on a B-17 Flying Fortress named “Fool’s Errand”, where she’s assigned to its Sperry ball turret.  During the trip, the bomber meets a surprise ambush by Japanese fighter planes.  To makes matters worse, a gremlin appears to have attached itself to the plane, and has been gradually tearing it apart.

The narrative exclusively follows the character of Garrett, and thus, the audience only gets to see the story unfold by where she is.  Thus, since she spends most of the movie inside the turret (“Garrett in a Turret”, ha), a large part of the runtime is spent there.  But even though it takes quite a while until the narrative leaves this contained environment, it doesn’t get boring at all.  Roseanne Liang’s solid direction and Chloë Grace Moretz’s captivating performance keep it compelling throughout this stretch.

Garrett is a terrific action heroine.  She is tough and capable, but this is balanced with vulnerabilities as well, making her a believable, likable character.  From the get go, not only does she have to deal with the uncomfortable, rundown condition of the space she’s assigned to, but also the antagonistic and sexist attitude toward her by most of the crew.  Then, when she sees enemy planes, they don’t believe her.  Thus, since they don’t believe her with something that’s possible, they surely don’t believe her when she reported something impossible, like a gremlin clinging to the underside of the plane. Later, they witness these threats for themselves, and she earns their grudging respect when she proves that she can hold her own.

Witnessing how she grinds her way to overcoming several layers of challenges is probably what I found most riveting about this movie.

Eventually, the narrative moves away from the turret.  And, honestly, the movie starts to feel like a run-of-the-mill pulpy action thriller by this time.  Nevertheless, it remains entertaining, because the third act contains well-executed, white-knuckled action sequences (albeit with some suspension-of-disbelief-breaking absurd occurrences).  Moreover, at this point, the true nature of Garrett’s mission has been revealed already, and the higher stakes that this reveal brought about only made the movie more tense and absorbing.

Overall, Shadow in the Cloud is an utterly fun action horror thriller.  On top of that, I would even agree that it’s a feminist film done right.