Elevation (film)

Elevation is a 2024 American post-apocalyptic action thriller film directed by George Nolfi and written by Kenny Ryan and Jacob Roman. It stars Anthony Mackie, Morena Baccarin, and Maddie Hasson.

Elevation
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	George Nolfi
Written by	John Glenn Kenny Ryan Jacob Roman
Produced by	Brad Fuller Anthony Mackie John Glenn Alex Black Jeremy Kipp Walker Joel Viertel George Nolfi
Starring	Anthony Mackie Morena Baccarin Maddie Hasson
Cinematography	Shelly Johnson
Edited by	Joel Viertel
Music by	H. Scott Salinas
Production companies	Lyrical Media Inspire Entertainment King's Ransom Media Story Ink
Distributed by	Vertical
Release date	November 8, 2024 (2024-11-08)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$18 million
Box office	$3 million

Elevation was released in the United States on November 8, 2024.

Plot

Three years ago, civilization was wiped out by mysterious apex predators called Reapers that emerged from sinkholes underground and exterminated most of humanity. Survivors live in pocketed communities that manage to evade the creatures so long as they are elevated at exactly 8,000 feet or above where the creatures cannot touch them.

One of the pocket communities is Lost Gulch Refuge in Front Range Colorado, where a single father, Will, lives with his only son, Hunter, who has a lung disease; Will is haunted by the death of his wife, Tara, who was killed during the expedition with Nina, a former scientist, by Reapers to find their weakness. Hunter becomes irritated after months of isolation when communities have turned off their radios to conserve their remaining electrical energy and use flags for signals instead. Will learns that he is running out of oxygen filters for Hunter, and he must go down to the ground to get more filters. Nina tries to dissuade Will from journeying to Boulder, Colorado and find more oxygen filters, but Will convinces her to come with him because she and Tara want to get to her old laboratory to find a way to kill the Reapers, and believes it may still be intact.

Katie joins them, and they enter the Elba Fire Road that leads them to a mine below the safety line. Nina has a compass device she invented that can detect a nearby Reaper due to their high bioelectromagnetic pulses. They gather supplies along the way, including a grenade launcher, and follow the road leading them to a former ski area. They are spotted by a Reaper, so Will turns on the backup generators to get the ski lift operating again, allowing the group to barely escape the Reaper behind the safety line. They rest at the old lodge, where Nina divulges a secret about the Reapers: they don't rest or eat; they kill humans nonstop, theorizing that they're not biological creatures.

The next morning, the group comes to the former mining tunnel Will knows when he was a miner; however, the mines' lower levels go below the safety line, and if they enter, the Reapers will track them because Nina's compass won't work when they're underground. As they enter the mines, the level above the safety life is welded shut during the initial invasion, forcing them to go below the lower levels. The group is then attacked by a Reaper, and Katie is killed by its tendrils. Nina and Will manage to escape the mines and make it back to the surface above the safety line.

Nina wants to go back to her lab for her stockpile of magnesium, hypothesizing that the Reaper's impenetrable scales produce magnetic defense mechanisms, and if one of the bullets is laced with a magnesium mineral, it will penetrate and kill the creature by causing internal combustion. They proceed to head for Boulder and scavenge for oxygen filters in an abandoned local hospital. Will finds more oxygen filters, but a Reaper attacks them, and Will shoots at gas canisters to stall it, giving them enough time to escape. Will wants to get back to his son, but Nina convinces him to help her so she can use the magnesium to make a bullet to kill them and give humanity a chance. They headed to her former laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy and started working on the bullet with the magnesium chemicals. Will learns that Nina used to have a family before the Reapers attack, and her family was killed. Nina lets Will go back to his son while she decides to stay and work on which magnesium elements can kill the creatures. As Will leaves, after several attempts, Nina successfully kills a Reaper that breaks into the lab to attack her with a bullet laced in cobalt.

Will leaves in a pickup truck, but his tires pop, causing him to crash while he is on the road, forcing him to run back to the safety line as Reapers are chasing after him. The Reapers corner him just as he was about to reach the safety line. However, Nina arrives just in time and kills the Reapers with her cobalt-laced bullets, causing them to explode from internal combustion upon impact. They realize that the Reapers are not biological, but machines with advanced alien technology, proving Nina's theory to be correct.

They return to Lost Gulch and Will reunites with Hunter. Nina raises a pirate flag for other nearby communities in the Rocky Mountains, signifying that a Reaper has been killed. The communities reignite their radio contact to start arming themselves with cobalt-coated bullets to fight back against the Reapers.

An Easter egg scene after the credits shows Nina observing through a telescope. She looks away as Will approaches, and the two gaze at the sky together as three greenish 'meteorites' enter orbit.

Cast

• Anthony Mackie as Will
• Morena Baccarin as Nina
• Maddie Hasson as Katie
• Shauna Earp as Hannah, a townsperson
• Rachel Nicks as Tara, Will's Wife
• Danny Boyd Jr. as Hunter, Will and Tara's son
• Tyler Grey as Tim

Production

In October 2022, it was announced that a post-apocalyptic action thriller film titled Elevation was in development, with George Nolfi hired to direct and Kenny Ryan and Jacob Roman writing the screenplay. Anthony Mackie, Morena Baccarin, and Maddie Hasson were set to star. In May 2024, Vertical acquired rights to the film.

Filming

Principal photography began by November 2022, in Colorado, and had wrapped by late March 2023.

Release

Elevation was released in the United States on November 8, 2024.

Reception

Box office

In the United States and Canada, Elevation was released alongside Heretic, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Weekend in Taipei, and the wide expansion of Anora. The film debuted with $1.2 million from 1,416 theaters in its opening weekend, finishing 11th at the box office.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 55% of 40 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Beautiful scenery and a solid star turn from Anthony Mackie raise Elevation up to an extent, but this sci-fi thriller is too derivative to reach the peak of its potential." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 49 out of 100, based on eight critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.

Zachary Lee of RogerEbert.com gave the film two and a half out of four stars and wrote, "[W]hile Elevation may never rise above its genre trappings or escape the shadow of its influences, it never stoops so low as to be mindlessly vapid. Simply executed at ninety minutes, it's escapism of the highest order, offering perils at a screen's distance of safety."

External links

• Elevation at IMDb