As evinced already by its Toronto International Film Festival premiere, and the strong reactions it provoked—not to mention our caustic review—discussing and writing about the Midnight Madness movie “Shadow In The Cloud” can be a tricky and complicated affair. Directed by Chinese-New Zealand film director Roseanne Liang (2012’s “My Wedding and Other Secrets”) and starring Chloë Grace Moretz (“The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” “Suspiria”), “Shadow In The Cloud,” is a crazy, pulpy, genre-hopping B-movie about a female WWII pilot (Moretz) trying to warn her pig-headed, sexist male comrades of a sinister stowaway on board the aircraft while they battle Japanese airforces and compounding challenges. Worse, she’s unwelcome and the all-male crew is deeply hostile to her, having insinuated herself onto the plane through unverified orders that many of the crew find dubious, but don’t have time to argue with. TIFF described the movie as a “new nightmare at 20,000 feet,” and that’s accurate, but I’d also call it batshit bananas, an absolute blast of B-movie madness with ludicrously hilarious twists and turns.
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I came into this film completely blind—one of my fave ways of seeing a movie if possible-—so the various twists, absurdities, and the utter audacity of its madness had me rolling in my seat. It wasn’t until the end that I saw the first screenwriting credit was the now-infamous Max Landis, a screenwriter renowned for his terribly toxic behavior, including multiple accusations against him of sexual and emotional abuse and physical assault. My mind reeled as I tried to reconcile the idea of this female empowerment story made by women, written by Landis, and wrapped up in an utterly nutty genre mashup action movie about WWII, gremlins, and survival against all odds (To that end, in retrospect, the freneticism of the movie does have his DNA all over it). My mind further lurched when I realized when the news of this project surfaced after his various assault and abuse scandals came to light and were framed by many media, right or wrong, as a “comeback.” While the timeline wasn’t exactly a mea culpa on Landis part—the film was actually in deep development and nearing pre-production when the accusations came out — regardless, the idea of an already-divisive figure accused of multiple accounts of abuse and assault writing a movie about a strong, female character battling leery men and supernatural forces. Wow, yikes.
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Still, as I continue to grapple with all that knowledge, and how it distorts and upends what I saw, I must contend with the fact and truth that I thought Liang’s film was an utter blast—Moretz is terrific in it as a new kind of Ellen Ripley-esque action heroine with her own darker secrets and Liang’s cinematic choices are insane, including a sinister, pulsing ‘80s synth score and a long stretch of the film which appears to be a single-setting trapped location movie that is incredibly nerve-wracking and ingeniously uses the squawking men on the radio—who are never seen during this period—as the film’s increasingly tense soundtrack. “Shadow In The Cloud” is all about a claustrophobic point of view, and Liang ensures the audience and movie’s gaze is glued to Moretz’s increasingly panicked POV. And then, of course, the movie just gets more off-the-charts nuts.
Right after I saw the film, (and before our polar opposite review was published or delivered), on the eve of the film’s TIFF premiere, I spoke to both Liang and Moretz about the film, its madness, intentions, and yes, about Landis too (you could argue I could’ve pushed either harder about the topic, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but I sensed an air of discomfort and didn’t want to exacerbate it—a failing I have as a journalist, I know). Regardless, yes, “Shadow In The Cloud” comes with a lot of baggage (complicating matters, IMDB and Wikipedia appear to be, intentionally or not, obfuscating Landis’ credit and even the film’s production notes list Liang as the first writer, when the presumably WGA-approved screen credits list Landis as the first writer. I told you this one was complicated).
All that said, I’m not sure they owe anyone, or at least me, an excuse for why they made this particular screenplay—as thorny and landmine-laden as it is, given the ugly circumstances around Landis—into the wild and crazy ride they did. Here’s my conversation with the two of them, edited for clarity (which mostly means keeping my rambling brief).
Hi guys, well, wow. This movie is batshit crazy [everyone laughs]. I mean that in a good way. I watched it very, very cold, knowing nothing about it. Uhh… tell me how this movie came together?
Roseanne Liang: Well, this project came across my desk in 2018, I believe, I connected with it and then we started talking about who might be good for this film. And then Chloe and I had a really great conversation and we aligned on so many things about the film and how it could reach its potential. It’s still needed a bit of work, and how we could really do more to make it the kind of movie that we could be really proud of.
Right, to that end, the elephant in the room. I had no clue Max Landis wrote this until afterward and that really threw me for a loop! And then I thought about you guys, the feminine edge of the movie and… well, it’s obviously all quite loaded. But I imagine you tried to make it your own? Tell me about all of that, working with his script, the baggage, etc.
Liang: Yeah. We did talk extensively together about it, you know? Should we do this movie? What are the reasons for doing this movie? Why this movie? And I think we came out of the other side and decided we’d only do this movie if we could make it our way and make it our own. So, Max wrote the early draft of the script. I came on and I was given carte blanche to work on the script in a way that I saw fit.
And you know, the irony of, a female empowerment movie made by women and, but 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 Chloe at the forefront of it. So, I know why this film is good, I know why we made this movie. We made it. He did not.
Can you guys talk about the things you guys infused it with to make it your own? It obviously has a strong feminist edge to it and there’s [spoiler redacted] thing at the end that feels like a really bold feminist statement that you’re forced to contend with.
Liang: What we loved about it was that we had a female empowerment character like [the lead character]. So, we didn’t want her to be a Mary Sue character, we didn’t want her to be sort of naturally good at everything. But at the same time, this is something that women across the world do in their everyday life. They get shit done. They do a whole bunch of stuff on top of each other.
Chloe Grace Moretz: That was definitely something that really excited me about Roseanne’s vision and it was something that I’d been wanting to be able to do for a while now, but I don’t think I’ve had the right project to be able to, to guide us in that line. Roseanne really knew what she wanted and she really wanted to make a multifaceted multi-dimensional female heroine who doesn’t make all the best decisions. Sometimes she makes decisions that ultimately are a bit selfish she’s not always out for the greater good, you know? I think having that problematic heroine, in and of itself, is a massive thing for women to be able to see. Because I think it’s an incredibly incorrect and unfair depiction— it’s like yes, you put women in leading roles, great, but why do they always have to be for the greater good always and always trying to strive to be better? Why can’t they be flawed? Not everyone is that kind of perfect person. So, I thought that was important.
Tell me about working in this genre, how you guys felt about it because it’s a WWII movie about a woman on this plane with these men, there’s great friction there and it’s definitely enough to sustain an entire movie. But then there’s this great twist and it goes towards the realm of the supernatural, and action and other craziness [laughs]
Moretz: [Laughs] I definitely think that was a big thing that made the movie incredibly appealing to me. What I’ve always loved about genre is the things you can get people into a theater and they’ll think it’s going to go a certain way and then you can sucker punch them with some really big ideals. And also layer it up with a decadent cake for them to eat! You know, this incredible, stylistic, exciting film that has to unravel. At the same time, having this character inside there, you also have a really incredible emotional story. And there are Easter eggs in the story that you don’t expect to happen, and they really pop up on the viewer. As you continue to watch the film and then maybe if you watch the film multiple times, as I have, you realize and see more things that Roseann was brilliant enough to sneak into it.
Liang: [What Chloe is describing] is really the kind of move that I love and there’s not that many of them when you think about the classic movies that you come back to over and over again. Like “Raiders of The Lost Ark” and the ‘Indiana Jones’ films, “Terminator 2.” When you think about “Terminator,” it works intellectually, emotionally, and spectacularly as well. Those are the films that I aspire to make. They fire on all cylinders and manage to succeed. And so, that’s what I hoped for with “Shadow In The Cloud,” to have spectacle, but also heart. It’s got all those elements in there, I think. Especially with Chloe making that character so three dimensional, and so watchable. I’ve watched and rewatched this movie thousands of times—filmmaking is obviously a naturally iterative process—and I never got sick of watching Chloe.
She always revealed a new dimension there. Some softness and some hardness. And then, all these micro expression truths she had in her face, and she carries herself is just endlessly interesting to watch. And that’s no small feat given that, it’s just her, we’re just watching her and you can’t cut away to anything else. I didn’t want to cut away to anything else. I mean, if it didn’t work, we could have cut to a million things, but the whole film is about her character, her psychological frame of mind, and her perception of the things that are happening to her. And Chloe was the absolute right person to bring that all forth.
I do love a lot of the bold POV elements of the film for sure. As you guys were rewriting, developing, and as you say, iterating on this movie, who are you thinking about? Who kind of action heroines did you have in mind?
Moretz: I know we talked about like Sigourney Weaver. That was one thing that we had discussed the look of her toward the end of the film, but I’d love to hear what you were thinking of Roseanne.
Liang: My hope is that she is a new iconic heroine to join the pantheon. But yes, Ellen Ripley is a gift, the O.G., from “Alien” and “Aliens.” She’s resourceful. She’s just any woman, really, but she’s got this vast well of strength inside of her and grit that is unlocked through adversity and Sigourney Weave does that so well in the “Alien” movies.. And that certainly was a jumping point. And I can’t let go of Sarah Connor from the “Terminator” movies, she’s so perfect in one sense, but not at all in another. She’s not the best mother. She does not make good decisions, but we love her. I can’t get past her, she will forever stand like a giant among our favorite heroines of all time. And I hope [Chloe’s character] can stand there too.
Chloe, do you have any favorite action heroines you thought about while making this?
Moretz: Well, Sigourney was definitely one of them and I was building from, but I also rewatched “Gravity” before I did this project to build off the way Sandra Bullock held that movie entirely on her back. You know, with little to do outside of her emotions and her vocality, and the story and journey you go on with her. So that was the thing I was centered on most. But as Roseanne said, we really wanted to create our own hero. So, it’s more like little pieces of influence and then building her within that kind of scope. And then there were all the classics, the “Indiana Jones” of it all. We wanted to bring in the elements of those male action stars, you don’t usually get that kind of tenacity in a female character. If you do, it’s usually on the snarkier side, and I think we kind of wanted to make it real to her, and when she fires back [at the men], she has some venom in her voice and we didn’t want to shy away from that.
For sure and female characters often have that extra burden of having to be likable on top of being tough and gruff. What I like about this character is she’s angry and abrasive, but so full of conviction that it doesn’t matter and you don’t think about it twice. Chloe, you’ve obviously starred in things like “Kick-Ass” with spectacle and action, but this feels really different since you’re like in every single scene and the camera is glued to you in a way I’m not sure I’ve seen before.
Moretz: I know what you’re saying. It’s definitely a daunting task. I was immediately excited, and I think one thing that I’ve been really looking for in my life and my career was, is to choose projects that really pushed me. To put myself in a position where I feel like, “can I do this?” Am I good enough to do this? Can I push myself to this limit? Is it too far? And this project definitely checked all those boxes. And doing it with Roseanne, and if you did this film with someone you didn’t trust, it could be a totally different project. But I knew going in, I could trust her wholeheartedly. I knew this was a lot of movie to carry, a lot of movie to hold, but she trusted me and I trusted her and I knew we could get through it together. The pace was fast too. 10-15 pages of dialogue, scene after scene. We jumped right in, got our hands dirty, and showed up to work kind of ready for battle.
It’s a big departure from the other projects I’ve done and those projects teed me up for this. I don’t think without the amount of experience I’ve had, I could have done it. There was a lot of technicality to it, but we work similarly. We were always really blunt with each other and really open with each other. And we had a lot of great conversations and I think I’m a better actor now after being part of this film, honestly. It’s one of the best films I’ve ever done. Honestly, when I saw it, I was like, “Whoa! This is way cooler than I even imagined it would be!”
“Shadow In The Cloud” is playing now at the Toronto International Film Festival.
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