It is a totally unpredictable film, if you don't know anything about its plot, if you go directly to see it, without looking at the trailer, you will be pleasantly surprised, as I did.

This crazy story is a mixture of war cinema, with monstrous creatures and aerial adventure. Also, with a heroine, who will be the main character of the whole film and will make us enjoy all the action that takes place throughout the film.

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What is the plot? I will summarize it without giving any important spoiler:

It's 1943 and at a base in New Zealand, in the middle of the great war of the Americans against the Japanese, Maude Garrett gets on a plane going on a transport mission. She has a paper with orders from the general, to take a package whose contents are confidential. The crew, made up of pure men, reluctantly accepts the order. But soon after take-off, trouble begins, enemy planes seem to be lurking, and this woman is not really who she says she is. Who is she? What is she carrying in that package? What is she hiding? What is this strange creature? The madness has just begun.

Enemy Japanese planes and creatures that look like bats are the main problems of the crew, who don't believe anything Maude says. She's definitely hiding something. But it will be this woman, the only one who can save them all, because she is determined to protect the contents of the package.

It's an hour and twenty minutes of high voltage and action. The film offers no rest, the plot advances at a dizzying rate, giving us no time to breathe. It hooks us, gets us into this crazy story, until it leaves us hallucinating by everything we have just seen, when it ends.

If you're one of those who wasn't happy with Wonder Woman 1984, this film offers you Maude Garret, a true heroine, without special powers, but who shot down enemy planes and killed creatures with her own hands.

Shadow in the Cloud is a New Zealand production, specifically from the Four Knights Film company, with a crazy idea, which without spending a fortune, offers a more exciting product than many Hollywood films that promised to be a box office success. Proving that you don't have to spend a ton of money on special effects, to make a story that will make the public hallucinate.

Whose idea was this film?

The screenwriter is the controversial Max Landis, son of the famous and successful filmmaker John Landis. Max gained recognition with his first script: Chronicle, which was directed by Josh Trank and was a success. He then wrote other projects, such as Mr. Right, directed by Paco Cabeza, and was also the author of the script for Bright, a hit on Netflix, directed by David Ayer and starring Will Smith.

But Max Landis' career took a nosedive when several women, about eight, accused him of sexual assault. Even an ex-girlfriend, Whitney Moore, posted horrible things on social networks about Max's behavior during their relationship.

When the scandal came to light, the film Shadow in the Cloud was already in an advanced stage, so when it was presented at the Berlin festival in 2019, the people responsible for the project and the lead actress herself, reported that the script had been assigned to be rewritten and Max was no longer part of the team.
Surely they added changes and other scriptwriters, not accredited, modified some things, but the original idea and the first script is by Max Landis, although he is a despicable sexual predator in the style of Harvey.

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Who is directing this schizophrenic film?

The film is directed by a woman filmmaker: Roseanne Liang, is of Chinese origin and in 2011 became very famous in New Zealand, because her film My Wedding and Other Secrets was the most successful and box office in that country. Previously, she had received awards for her short films and her talent as a director.

I have felt satisfied with Liang's work as a director, what I have liked most is the rhythm, there is no time to lose, it gets us into the story and keeps us in constant emotion. It's the kind of rhythm that many action, adventure and fantasy productions need, so that we are ecstatic, no matter how crazy the story is.

The heroine and superwoman of the film.

The actress Chloë Grace Moretz is the protagonist of the film. She plays Maude Garret, that mysterious girl who gets on the military plane by order from above and who will defend with her life the contents of the package she must transport.

The actress must have had a great time working in this crazy movie, there is not a minute that she is not on the screen, she is the main character of the story and she does it very well, she is a warrior woman, who left the team of males surprised by her combat skills.

She became famous for being one of the protagonists of the Kick-Ass movies and now, in Shadow in the Cloud, she is the one who beat up that giant bat monster. The actress is fabulous in her role, besides offering very funny moments.

All the others are male actors and their characters are secondary: Nick Robinson plays Stu Beckell; Beulah Koale plays Anton Williams; Taylor John Smith plays Walter Quaid; Callan Mulvey plays John Reeves; Benedict Wall plays Tommy Dorn; Joe Witkowski plays Bradley Finch and Byron Coll plays the hateful Terence Taggart. None of them shines, they are just there to play their supporting role and be saved by the woman in the lead.

Trailer

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POSTER

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