SHADOW IN THE CLOUD (2020) plays out like a combination of a couple of famous episodes of AMAZING STORIES and THE TWILIGHT ZONE. It stars Chloe Grace Moretz as an aviatrix hitching a ride on a US bomber in WW2 who becomes convinced that a malignant gremlin has hitched a ride and is now doing its best to destroy both the plane and the crew. Yep, it's a re-run of that classic old Matheson story about the plane passenger and the gremlin on the wing of his plane, except ten times as cheesy and lacking the freshness of that premise.
It's tough to find good things to say about this low budget oddity, and Moretz isn't one of them. I appreciate the way her character battles the sexism and harassment of the era, but she's whiny here and hard to like as the protagonist. The story is fast-paced and full of action and spectacle, but also plenty of low grade CGI and a monster (essentially a giant bat-thing) that looks like it's wandered in off an Asylum movie. As time goes on, things get more and more preposterous, with the most ridiculous scene being a bit where Moretz falls out of her plane and lands on an exploding plane beneath her, the force of which blows her back up into her plane again unscathed. It lost me at that point and never recovered.
It's tough to find good things to say about this low budget oddity, and Moretz isn't one of them. I appreciate the way her character battles the sexism and harassment of the era, but she's whiny here and hard to like as the protagonist. The story is fast-paced and full of action and spectacle, but also plenty of low grade CGI and a monster (essentially a giant bat-thing) that looks like it's wandered in off an Asylum movie. As time goes on, things get more and more preposterous, with the most ridiculous scene being a bit where Moretz falls out of her plane and lands on an exploding plane beneath her, the force of which blows her back up into her plane again unscathed. It lost me at that point and never recovered.