This movie came out in 2024, so I don’t really think it’s old enough to consider it a Movie I’ve Missed Until Now. In fact, I think I’ll just slap an arbitrary rule on here and say that a movie has to have come out before 2020 in order to get that designation. However, ELEVATION is, in fact, a movie I never heard of until I came across it recently and decided to give it a try.
During the pitch meeting for this movie, somebody is bound to have said, “It’s like A QUIET PLACE, only instead of being quiet so the scary monsters won’t get you, you have to stay above 8,000 feet in elevation so the scary monsters won’t get you.” That’s the plot, boiled down. A brief prologue clues us in that several years earlier, giant sinkholes suddenly opened all over the world and indestructible monsters came out to massacre 95% of Earth’s population.
Giant sinkholes with monsters coming out of them immediately makes me think of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and my first question is, “Hey, where’s the Mole Man?” Well, nowhere in sight in this movie. No superheroes come to the rescue. Earth gets its butt kicked, and the monsters have taken over the world except for a few colonies of survivors established above 8,000 feet.
Anthony Mackie and his young son live in one such colony in Colorado, but the boy needs some medical equipment to survive, so he sets off for Boulder with a scientist played by Morena Baccarin. She’s obsessed with finding a way to kill the monsters and believes that if she can reach her lab there, she’ll be able to do so. Unfortunately, Boulder is below 8,000 feet.
Most of the movie consists of them getting there and back, with lots of danger and adventure along the way. And it’s decently done, too. The special effects look a little crude now and then, but overall the movie worked for me. Mackie and Baccarin both do decent jobs. There are a few other characters, but the movie is really theirs to carry. There’s no sex, and despite the presence of scary monsters and death, very little gore.
I was going to gripe about how we don’t even get any handwavium to explain the plot, but then late in the movie there’s a twist that actually does explain some things while opening up other questions. I’ve seen speculation on-line that this movie was made as a pilot for an unsold streaming series, and the plot twist and a mid-credits epilogue make a strong case for that. I liked it enough I wouldn’t have minded seeing it continue. As is, it’s not exactly an overlooked gem, but it is an enjoyable hour and a half and I’m glad we watched it.
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