“Shadow in the Cloud” takes place in a small hatch of an airplane during World War II, and star Chloe Grace Moretz says she had to overcome her claustrophobia to play the female pilot in Roseanne Liang’s film.
“It was the first thing that I said to Roseanne,” Moretz told Beatrice Verhoeven in TheWrap’s virtual Toronto interview studio. “I said to her, ‘How small is this little ball going to be, because I am severely claustrophobic!’ We were lucky to have a couple panels be taken off, so we lost the front square and when we filmed from the side, we would lose the top of the side square. So because of that, I had fresh air and we constantly had fans, and I had to focus against it. The truth is, Maude might’ve been uncomfortable in that position, too, so feeding into the reality of the anxiety and fear and pushing them into the character.”
“Shadow in the Cloud” stars Moretz as Maude Garrett, a female World War II pilot in an airplane holding on to top-secret documents who encounters an evil presence during the flight. Liang wrote and directed the film that also stars Nick Robinson, Callan Mulvey and Taylor John Smith.
“I loved it because it’s a film like we’ve never seen before,” Liang added. “It’s a World War II movie about a female pilot from the female pilot’s perspective. It’s a genre mesh: it’s an action thriller, horror, but there are also elements of social relevance and thoughtful things to it and meaning and heart, and also it’s got unpredictability. It has a plot you can’t predict and you are afraid for Garrett’s life.”
Most of the movie is shot tight on Moretz’s face, apart from a fight scene that Moretz says she was prepared for due to her years of starring in action films.
“I think my preparation for most fight sequences came from ‘Kick-Ass,’ from being in action from a young age,” she said. “I’ve continued my training throughout the years … We didn’t have much prep time so we had some solid sessions but ultimately we only had two or three full run-throughs, none of which were in location.”
Moretz says she put herself in the mind of Maude, who probably didn’t have the same amount of hand-to-hand combat training and fight preparation. “I wanted to make it as this girl was a bit more scrappy.”
“Shadow in the Cloud” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last week.
Watch the video above.
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