Don’t Go Below

I like Anthony Mackie. He’s a really solid actor. I think in a different decade, where Hollywood was actually willing to grow and foster actors so that they could support movies (as opposed to the current era where franchise support movies and “A-List” actors aren’t really a thing anyway), Mackie could have been a top of the line star. His face, his name, on a movie poster would bring people out in droves. He’d be A-List, through and through, if Hollywood still operated like that. In a different era, he’d be the reason why people went to see Captain America: Brave New World, and not just because it was a Captain AmericaCreated by Simon and Kirby in 1941, Captain America was a super soldier created to fight Germany and the evil HYDRA. Then he was lost in the ice, only to be found and reborn decades later as the great symbol of the USA. movie. But that’s not the era we live in.

Instead, when not playing Falcon / Captain America II, Mackie seems unable to get his career going in high gear. While he has starred in a smattering of films outside the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe., by and large these have been underperformers that failed to light the world on fire. He clearly has to take what he can get, and not everything being offered is interesting or even good. It’s projects like Elevation, a low-budget, post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller produced by Lyrical Media and which, upon release, completely fizzled out at the Box Office. Mackie deserves better.

And the thing is, watching this film, you have to know that everyone involved in the movie could tell it was crap. It’s a poorly made movie that desperately wants to be The Last of Us, just without the interesting premise or cool hook. “The end of the world is in, right?” you can hear the producers saying, and they grabbed a C-list script and a sub-par director to get this project off the ground. The only reason anyone would even pay attention to it at all is because it has Anthony Mackie in it, but even then, people don’t turn out for actors anymore, they turn out for concepts, and Elevation has a terrible concept. It’s just bad.

It’s been three years since a mysterious species crawled out of the ground and started attacking humans. Seemingly impervious to damage, the creatures ripped across the world, killing all the humans (and only humans) in their way. It wasn’t for food, as the monster didn’t eat their prey, they just killed for the sake of killing, and soon all of humanity was pushed to the brink of extinction. But the creatures had a weakness: for some reason they couldn’t go above an elevation of 8,000 ft above sea level. What humans remained moved above that point, living on rough mountain terrain, waiting for a day when someone would find a weakness and humanity could fight back.

Will (Mackie) doesn’t want to fight the aliens. He just wants to stay safe, above 8,000 ft, with his son, Hunter (Danny Boyd Jr.), at the Lost Gulch Refuge in Front Range, Colorado, But there’s a problem with that: Hunter has a condition that requires safe, clean oxygen for him to be able to breathe, but they’re running out of oxygen filters. Will expected this day to come eventually, he just hoped they’d have more time. Now he has to put together a small team to go out into Boulder, CO, to raid a hospital and find oxygen filters. And if they just so happen to get close to a lab where scientist (and fellow refugee), Nina (Morena Baccarin), can find what she needs to maybe make a “magic bullet” that can kill the creatures, then that’s also a win.

Let’s be clear, the concept behind Elevation could work with the right development. The film is clearly borrowing ideas from other sources, like an impervious alien scourge taken from A Quiet Place to the post-apocalyptic, roughing it on a mountain scenario from The Last of Us. It uses that shorthand to try and get the audience involved so they know what’s going on and what to expect. “You like these works, right? Then you’ll like Elevation!” it says, while its characters mosey through their adventure.

The problem is that the film doesn’t really know how to get you invested in the story the way The Last of Us or A Quiet Place could. Those works had an intriguing premise we hadn’t seen before, backed by characters we could enjoy, and they spent the time developing the scenario in front of you, presenting mystery and intrigue before dumping you into the middle of the seemingly no-win scenario. They made you care by putting in the work, but Elevation never does it. It starts and ends with storytelling shorthand.

For instance, where did the alien creatures come from? “Oh, they just crawled out of the dirt.” That’s the answer we get, and what we’re left with (at least, right up until the very end of the film where it tries to throw in an utterly terrible, and frankly expected, twist). We don’t see the aliens arrive, we don’t witness the carnage, we don’t have a moment with Will and his family where they’re running in terror while the apocalypse happens around them. We get dropped in five years after, once everything has settled down, and we’re just left with the thought that, “oh, the apocalypse has happened.” Without the work to set it up, the apocalypse seems boring and it’s just hard to care.

And also, why don’t the aliens go above 8,000 ft? That’s the key factor of this film, the part that says, “here’s why the humans are still alive,” but not one, ever, does the film explain why. Characters even ask the question, but it has no answer. Someone went around one day and painted a long line all along the mountain to let humans know to stay above 8,000 ft, but the film never once gives us a reason for why that works. It doesn’t even show us what happens if an alien goes above that line. They just can’t, magically. It’s stupid. The film needed to develop this scenario and give us an illustration of why, and it never does.

By a similar token, to get us invested in Will, we don’t develop him as a character. He was middle management at a mine, we eventually learn, but this is just an easy way for the film to have an action setpiece in a mine. Outside of that, we/ don’t learn much about him, especially not anything of value to his character. Our motivation to care about him is because he has a son that’s sick. The film plays the “child card” to get us invested, but it doesn’t really work because, one, the kid is nothing more than a prop and not a real character and, two, we don’t even know why he’s sick or what he has.

Bear in mind that we don’t see any other kids in the film so we don’t know if they’re also sick due to bad air. Will and the other adults don’t show any signs of oxygen weakness, so we have to assume this is a specific condition Hunter has, but it’s never explained what’s going on. The filters are the motivation factor to get Will out on the road, but even then it’s a temporary solution, as we’re told. Instead of looking for filters, he should be looking for a cure. Or, maybe, helping Nina get to her lab first and foremost so she can make her magic bullets.

But then, none of the other characters in the film are any more developed that Will. Nina is shown to be a mean, nasty drunk and, well, that’s all we get from her. Will is mad at her because Nina went on a previous expedition with Will’s wife, and only Nina returned. But while her motivation was good, the film treats her like a villain. And then when she and Will reconcile, it’s in the most perfunctory way before the film has to move right along to the climax. It doesn’t feel satisfying at all.

Meanwhile, Will’s other traveling companion is Katie (Maddie Hasson), his best friend. You’d assume she’d be there to act as a romantic interest and give Will something to fight for, but no. She’s as poorly developed as Will and Nina, and then she’s killed off halfway into the second act so that we can see the creatures mean business. It’s not even a good death; she dies stupidly, and for no reason, but the film treats it like it’s a massive shock… right before the characters move on and never mention her again. She should have been a second protagonist, but instead she’s dumped like so much fodder.

And then there are the creatures. They feel like rejects from a James Cameron movie, with various bits and bobs tacked on to make them look “scary”. They’re what you’d get if you told A.I. to generate an armored alien. There’s no artistry to their design, no efficiency in their evolutionary factors. They’re designed solely to be big and to kill, without anything that distinguishes them or makes them feel interesting. Great aliens, like the xenomorphs, the predators, hell even the critters, have factors that stick them in your mind. I watched Elevation only a couple of days ago and I barely remember anything about the creatures here except that they’re big. That’s it. These are not scary, imposing killers that add fear to the film; they’re CGI blunders there to fill space and time.

There really isn’t anything of value to Elevation. The story is rote, the scenario not much better, and the action is perfunctory at best. You don’t care about the adventure, or the characters, or what they have to do because nothing is developed and everything goes exactly how you’d expect. Any one of a dozen previous post-apocalyptic films and shows have done this kind of idea better and more interesting. Elevation is as bland and basic as it gets, and that leads to a film that feels hollow, empty, and without merit. I like Anthony Mackie, I really do, but the man deserves better than this kind of bargain-basement slop.