Shadow in the Cloud

“‘Not all men,’ I could hear myself thinking.”

Title: Shadow in the Cloud (2020)
Director: Roseanne Liang 👩🏻🇳🇿
Writers: Roseanne Liang 👩🏻🇳🇿 and Max Landis 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 3.5/5

Love it or hate it, Shadow in the Cloud does nothing by halves. Roseanne Liang’s outlandish camp thriller, which closed out Toronto International Film Festival this year, joins the ranks of ridiculous B-movies alongside gems like Sharknado (2013) or Snakes on a Plane (2006).

Its gremlin-blasting hijinks solidly entertain, but make no mistake, the glossy veneer rests on rickety struts. No one is here to hone their Acting™ or Screenwriting™ skills. And the crawl-to-nitro-blast pacing especially cries out for help, making the film feel longer than its brisk 83-minute runtime.

The wobbly first act takes place in a claustrophobic hamster globe, where we’re stuck with protagonist Maude Garrett (Chloë Grace Moretz) onboard the fighter plane subtly named “The Fool’s Errand.” Predictably, flying monsters begin to attack. Gunning down the occasional snarling gremlin keeps some of the action aloat, but the neverending deluge of verbal abuse that simultaneously spews through Maude’s headset—courtesy of the assholes who locked her into the enclosed turret in the first place—is exhausting to listen to. Feeling more like a radio drama than an actual movie, this weak interlude spans twenty, maybe thirty minutes that could have been resolved in a fraction of the time.

But once the film breaks out of its aural experiment, all bets are off. Guns go kablamming and hilarious physics grounded in Looney Tunes logic send audiences on a dizzying carnival ride. Add to the mix some telenovela backstories for Maude and her boo Quaid (Taylor John Smith), and you quickly realize that Liang is in full command of the film’s tongue-in-cheek comedy. So strap in for some stupid fun and prepare to cringe-laugh your way to the other side.

Gender: 3.75/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

How does a film swing so hard for feminism yet miss by so far?

Let’s start with the obvious. Despite the film’s best efforts to distance itself from Max Landis, the man accused of emotional and sexual abuse by eight different women, his screenwriting credit still persists like that guy who won’t stop following you on the street asking what your name is. When you know a line of dialogue like “She’s got one of those mouths you could fuck” originates from the same man who once said in an interview, “I wrecked her because she was there to be wrecked,” well. There isn’t much to do besides dry-heave into a paper bag.

Yet I wouldn’t want to punish the rest of the cast and crew for Landis’ unfortunate existence. Liang says it herself, “The irony of a female empowerment movie … originally scripted by a man who was accused of sexual assault is not lost on me, truly. But he is one person and we had hundreds of people working on this film, with me and Chloë at the forefront of it.”

The thing is, Landis or no Landis, Shadow in the Cloud still fails to empower women onscreen. For starters, there aren’t even “women,” not in the plural sense, anyhow. You have Moretz as Maude. And a pin-up bombshell painted on the side of a fighter jet. That’s it.

To her credit, Moretz holds down the fort through sheer will and presence. The fact that she actively seems like she’s having a blast with the material goes far, and her energy translates through the screen for some genuine “rah rah” moments. But the all-male supporting cast and their accompanying litany of dehumanizing vitriol do nothing to add to Maude’s character. In fact, the verbal onslaught made me wince at such one-dimensional portraitures. “Not all men,” I could hear myself thinking, before promptly wishing I could sew my ears shut because clearly this script wasn’t doing anyone any favors.

When I hear “female empowerment,” I want to see women rendered in full. I want to see them build relationships with each other. I want to see systemic issues exposed, not cartoon male villains scapegoated for deeper problems. You’ll find none of that here.

Race: 3/5

Shadow in the Cloud presents WWII from a white perspective, following Allied soldiers whose accents lean American, Scottish, and English onboard The Fool’s Errand. They shoot at Japanese pilots from a distance, but I’m actually glad for the absence of visible actors here; I really don’t need to see East Asian faces get jubilantly taken out alongside foaming misogynists and tentacle-tailed gremlins.

One non-white character does make it to the screen. Williams, assigned to cargo, is played by Beulah Koale from New Zealand of Samoan descent. He thankfully avoids getting lumped into the rest of the sexist crew members and enjoys a happier fate than most of his colleagues. A modern-day token, if you will: Williams may be the sole character of color and shallow in depth, but he easily skips over tropes of yore like being the first to die or stuffed into a fawning helper role.

Behind the scenes, it’s genuinely exciting to see New Zealander Liang, who was born to Chinese immigrants, get the chance to produce something that has nothing to do with race. White storytellers regularly enjoy the latitude to make films about whatever they want, and I love that Shadow in the Cloud offers Liang the same opportunity.

Mediaversity Grade: C+ 3.42/5

Forget the “female empowerment” logline and embrace Shadow in the Cloud for what it is: A laugh-out-loud crack thriller featuring Moretz looking like she’s having a fuckton of fun. While it may be heavy-handed and a slog to get through at times, knowing that a female filmmaker of color gets to surf this turbulence—and still find success, fingers crossed—only sweetens the pot.

Like Shadow in the Cloud? Try these other over-the-top action flicks that defy physics.

Grade: CLiSeptember 22, 2020Female/Nonbinary Creator