I watched a movie, almost at random the other night, and I haven't shut up about it since. Then I figured, hey, instead of annoying my co-workers (more than usual), I can channel that into a blog.
“Shadow in the Cloud” first caught my eye at a Redbox because the poster of Chloe Grace Moretz in a flight suit and the title reminded me of Cloud 9, an obscure Marvel character from “The Initiative” series.
While I fondly remember the glory days of video stores, I usually don't get movies from Redbox. It's like betting $1.80 that I can watch an entire movie in a single night, and I don't like those odds.
I do make note of what's at a Redbox so I can maybe order a movie later from my local library. That way I have an entire week to watch the movie or, as is often the case, return it unwatched. But for free.
The other night, I actually sat down to watch “Army of the Dead,” but with a running time of two-and-a-half hours plus, it wasn't feasible that evening. So I flipped through my Hulu list and, lo and behold, there was “Shadow in the Cloud.”
The Hulu description is fairly brief: “A female WWII pilot traveling with top secret documents on a B-17 Flying Fortress encounters an evil presence on board the flight.”
Interesting setup, random association with a comic series I enjoyed, seeing an actor who rose to prominence as a kid in a grown-up role. And the running time was under 90 minutes, so I likely wouldn't have any trouble staying awake. I've watched movies for less.
I'll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible. The trailer and the website give away a lot but not everything. But if I'd have known even half of what was coming, this would have been a totally different experience. Still, I will share a few specifics to set the scene.
The movie opens with a cartoon warning soldiers to take care of their aircraft and not blame problems on “gremlins.” This immediately reminded me of the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Falling Hare,” in which he battles a diminutive gremlin trying to sabotage military planes.
I was figuring “Ghosts on a Plane,” but, OK, I'll play along.
I was thrown further off balance by music that evoked a very specific time period – not the 1940s, but the '80s, a la “Stranger Things.”
Carrying her mysterious cargo, the mysterious Maude (Moretz) boards a plane with an international crew of men who haven't seen a woman in a long time and may not have known how to behave the last time they did. I wondered whether the vulgarities they hurled were actually part of the vernacular back then but decided that wasn't an Internet rabbit hole down which I wanted to venture.
My primary examples of World War II masculinity were my grandfather and Captain America, so I just assumed nobody cussed until the '60s.
From there, the movie could have worked as a tense espionage thriller or a period horror flick and, for a while, did a decent job as both.
Then stuff gets weird.
Really weird.
The “evil presence” on board isn't the only threat the characters face, nor are Maude's challenges limited to just it and the sexist, suspicious crew.
Revelation follows revelation, and before I could renegotiate my suspension of disbelief, the stakes change, multiple times. We get a bit of melodrama and what feels at times like near-“Hot Shots” levels of parody.
Maude finds herself in situations that would make the most macho '80s action hero break a sweat or at least stop to contemplate the laws of physics. Tweeting along with the movie (@evan_bevins if you want to occasionally see something like this unfold in real time), I said, “Captain Marvel wishes it was this feminist.”
Maybe that's not the right term, or maybe some people wouldn't find parts of the film as pro-woman. But I feel like the script by Max Landis (“Bright”) and director Roseanne Liang was aimed at making Maude an action hero at the level of any guy, while still keeping her specifically female.
As I referenced before, the language in the film is unfortunate. Some of it, I get, but it goes overboard and isn't limited to just the men.
There are problems with the film's logic and details and even movie-world realism, but I watched the last third of it with my jaw dropped. It was a combination of being impressed, shocked and confused.
Good, bad or somewhere in between, this is the craziest movie I've seen in a long time.
And I'm still talking about it, so that's got to count for something, right?
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