Shadow in the Cloud starring Chloe Grace Moretz is a wonderfully over-the-top nod to female pilots in World War II as well as nods to The Twilight Zone (specifically ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’), John Carpenter (the film’s score feels like Carpenter through and through) and allows Moretz to get her Ripley on.

Boarding a B-17 bomber, Maude Garrett (Moretz) is carrying a confidential package and is on a secret mission. But things aren’t going to go easy for her. The plane’s crew is sexist, and racist, and has no patience for a woman on their flight, no matter what her rank may be, and she finds herself locked in the underbelly turret.

From the beginning of the film, we stay with Garrett throughout, we hear through the ship’s comms what may be going on in the main body of the plane, and she is shocked to discover that not only are there Japanese planes in the area, meaning their mission now has combat overtones but there may be something on the plane with them… a gremlin.

The film leans into its creature feature aspect. If you don’t buy the set-up something that is established right at the beginning of the film, you aren’t going to enjoy it.

As the secrets being kept on the plane, and about Garrett and her mission, come to light, things begin to get very desperate as the gremlin sabotages the plane, the Japanese fighters are closing in, and Garrett has her hands full with all of it and more.

Moretz is a lot of fun to watch throughout and seems to be really enjoying herself, and the film’s visual effects are solid, though in some situations, not great. But that just adds to the cheesiness and enjoyment of the film. Nothing is going to stop Garrett from pulling off her mission, even if it means taking on fighters, the plane’s crew, and the gremlin, which is a wonderfully dangerous creature and is an interesting character design.

It’s a short film, barely running an hour and twenty-odd minutes, but consequently, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, it gets in, delivers a monster movie (and has a lot of fun doing it) and lets Moretz shine as she is in practically every shot.

This one played TIFF in 2020 as part of the Midnight Madness program where it took home the People’s Choice Award. And I think this would have been a great one to see with a midnight crowd, it would have been a hoot!

So if you’re looking for a creature feature that doesn’t expect too much from you, and feels like a new take on familiar material, then this one could be for you. I quite enjoyed it.