Chloë Grace Moretz accom­plish­es the dif­fi­cult feat of car­ry­ing most of this 86-minute WWII sci-fi adven­ture thriller as Maude Gar­rett. Despite its short length, its cen­tral plot point is hol­low enough that it’s a won­der it man­ages to keep things inter­est­ing for longer than half an hour, but it does. There are enough well-paced rev­e­la­tions and gen­uine­ly sus­pense­ful action sequences to keep you pulled in for the duration.

Moret­z’s Gar­rett is a tough-as-nails pilot deal­ing with pre­dictable shit from her male flight com­pan­ions, while a chimeric source of ter­ror may or may not be stalk­ing them in the air. Her stub­born­ness, dread, and anger make her a believ­able and mem­o­rable hero­ine who it’s impos­si­ble not to root for.

The oth­er per­for­mances are a bit flat, espe­cial­ly as they are ham­strung by the neces­si­ty of the claus­tro­pho­bic set­ting for most of the action — we rarely see anoth­er face oth­er than Moret­z’s. Some light spe­cial effects range from pass­able to ’90s B‑movie, enough to take you out of what should oth­er­wise be grip­ping scenes.

Shad­ow in the Cloud is a fun film to watch, but suf­fers from its fair­ly thread­bare sto­ry and lack of any depth of rela­tion­ship between the char­ac­ters. The sound­track is pret­ty great, with a delight­ful appear­ance by Duchess Says.