‘Elevation’ Review: It’s A Movie With Anthony Mackie, But Can He Take It To New Heights?

If you are looking for a generic action movie, it doesn’t get more generic than Elevation starring Anthony Mackie. Currently dealing with the soon-to-be $400 million disaster we know as Captain America: Brave New World, he is a notable name in entertainment, but hasn’t proven to be a leading man in any real capacity. Mackie can enhance a film that he is a part of but there’s an elephant in the room: Does he have enough to lead his film?

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Unfortunately for Marvel Studios, they shall have to learn that lesson the hard way in 2025. Vertical Entertainment, however, is a studio known for movies with a significantly smaller budget. The risk of propping up Mackie’s main-event status is far smaller leading us to this sci-fi apocalyptic film.

Elevation takes place in a future where monstrous creatures have burrowed from the Earth and begun wiping out the human population. Fast-forward three years and 95% of the world has been killed by these monsters. The only path of safety humanity seems to have is the fact that these creatures cannot travel above the elevation of 8000 ft.

In a small Mountain colony in Colorado, Will (Mackie) and a handful of survivors are taking care of his sick son, who has an illness that requires him to constantly be supplied oxygen to keep him from dying.  After using the last artificial canister that he has, Will has no choice but to travel below elevation into the town of Boulder in an attempt to find him more oxygen canisters to keep his son alive.

Joining him on this journey is an alcoholic scientist named Nina (Morena Baccarin) looking for a way to kill the creatures using a special bullet. They soon meet a Texas girl, Katie (Maddie Hasson), known for chopping wood and carrying water. These three individuals must descend into the city where they can be targeted by unkillable monsters at any given moment.

Elevation is the textbook definition of a filler movie. There’s nothing special about the film in its presentation. The opening minute sets the stage for the universe that the characters find themselves in by not showing the origin of the creatures, and how they were able to wipe out most of humanity.

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If you squint hard enough, you can see elements of A Quiet Place, which inspired the premise of this movie with the key difference of being tracked by exhaled CO2 as opposed to sound.

We see the conflict in which our protagonist must go into the town to obtain medicine for a sick child and try to survive along the way. The acting is textbook, small-budget, and serviceable. Much like a system quarterback, Anthony Mackie only has one job, get the audience from point A to point B, and that is exactly what he does.

Morena Baccarin and Maddie Hasson are Mackie’s co-stars but they are miscast in a sense. They come off as women playing roles that were written for men and given to them for the sake of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The runtime is very short, only 90 minutes from start to finish, meaning you’ll be in and out of this film without much of a drag.

The short runtime works in the film’s favor as Elevation succeeds in not overstaying its welcome. Quick to the point and for that reason is not a terrible film, it is the perfect time killer if you have a small window that you are looking to fill with something that you haven’t checked out before. Elevation is the perfect movie to fill that void.

With that said, it does come off as something that works better on a streaming service such as Netflix or Hulu than in theaters. Elevation is nothing more than a glass-half-full movie. It isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either, and certainly one of the more indistinct movies to come out this year.

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