WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Shadow in the Cloud, now available in select theaters, VOD and digital.
Shadow in the Cloud is a rollicking firefight in the sky as Chloë Grace Moretz's Maude Garrett, a female flight officer for the British Royal Air Force, joins an Allied flight to transport a mysterious package to Samoa. However, in addition to dealing with the toxic crew, the ride gets even more complicated when Japanese bombers come after them and a gremlin begins tearing the plane apart.
While Maude and her crew do end up surviving their encounter, Shadow in the Cloud has some pretty horrific plot holes.
When Maude comes on, she's sent into the gun pit below the plane, as the men don't want her up top. Eventually, the gremlin starts attacking her through the glass, but the guys have already locked off comms, playing a prank on their female crew-member. This results in her pulling a gun that she smuggled on board and shooting once at the creature's tail that sneaks in through the grating and tries to grab her.
The crew enables comms once more and starts querying why there's a loud bang, which Maude lies and says is the engine sputtering or mechanical failures occurring. While this argument occurs, the gremlin keeps attacking her, smothering the glass and exposing its chest and face. Maude switches the comms off but refuses to fire the gun again. At this point, there's no reason not to kill the monster as the crew already suspects Maude's up to something shady and plan to bring her up for questioning. Killing the beast then and there, though, would have guaranteed her safety and that of the package. She already had an alibi for the blasts, so there's no reason to be trigger-shy.
It turns out that Maude's package is her baby she smuggled on board as she was escaping an abusive husband after being stationed in New Zealand. The guys don't find out about this until later, though, and it happens when they realize her papers are fake after calling base to ascertain more about her. At this point, seeing as she's locked down below, they should have immediately gone to inspect the package and realized it's her child.
Instead, they argue over the comms just to add drama. This is done so her child's father, Quaid, could resist opening the package and show them that it is indeed a kid. Shadow in the Cloud tries to then force a scuffle where Quaid gets shot, but the thing is, he didn't know a baby was in there. According to the rules of flight, once the papers were fake, he should have stepped aside, especially as he didn't want to blow his own cover as her lover. Had she let him in on the secret, they could have likely hidden the child better.
When the rabid gremlin eventually makes its way into the plane, the creature tries to go out a hole on the wing. But Maude fires on it, which is a big mistake, as the gremlin could have dropped the baby-bag it stole had it been hit. The creature eventually leaves the package hanging on some cables, causing Maude to crawl along the plane's underbelly, holding onto gratings with no harness and using a piece of metal to hook the bag.
Somehow, the rules of physics don't apply, as there's no drag or turbulence to push her back. Maude's hand is also damaged after trying to shoot the gremlin, and seeing as she struggled to hold her gun, holding the package should be a problem. Yet somehow, Shadow in the Cloud forgets about her hand injury, allowing her to acrobatically get back into the plane. Given how three Japanese planes are shooting at her as well as she crawls and nothing hits her or the underside of the plane, it seems like Maude has a really lucky streak going.
In time, Maude helps destroy the Japanese attackers and land the damaged plane. But with everyone nursing injuries, Maude realizes they need to move quickly as oxygen tanks are exposed to flames. She even yells at Quaid to leave the pilot who helped her, which is weird and uncharacteristic as she can take the package herself and doesn't really need him. The real plot hole, though, happens when they exit.
Just a few feet away from the crash, the plane blows up but there's no shockwave. They just slump over rather than be sent flying, despite many tanks detonating and the big explosion being pretty close to them. If Shadow in the Cloud wanted to buck physics again, it could have let them slowly stroll further away, because at this distance, they're supposed to be flung away. This plot hole seems to result from just trying to keep the baby-bag safe.
The gremlin attacks one more time, trying to grab the baby-bag, but Maude smashes it with a piece of iron. She then hunts the creature down, lands some hefty blows and uses its tail to impale it. But the thing is, the gremlin tries to run instead of fly away. The gremlin has wings and can glide or leap away. However, in this shot, the creature doesn't have any wings.
At no point did Maude burn, cut or shoot off the wings; the gremlin was just damaged and fell from the sky after being shot during their fight. There's just no explanation as to why the wings disappeared. While an argument could be made the gremlin needed to jump off some high point to spread its wings, there's really no indication that's the case, and there are nearby rocks the monster could have easily taken off from. Instead, Shadow in the Cloud just wants Maude to have a hero moment as she brutally beats down the gremlin.
Shadow in the Cloud, directed by Roseanne Liang and starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Beulah Koale, Taylor John Smith and Callan Mulvey, is now available in select theaters, VOD and digital.
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