‘Elevation’ Review: Humanity Is Prey in Brisk Sci-Fi Monster Movie

A coincidence of release scheduling has art imitating life in “Elevation,” which depicts America’s near future as simultaneously bleak and fraught with suspenseful peril. This isn’t “Civil War,” however, but a monster movie of sorts — involving mysterious creatures who decimate all humanity living below 8,000 feet.

Playing more like an action film than horror, George Nolfi’s film stars Anthony Mackie as a father whose son’s medical needs force him to venture down into the danger zone. It’s a reasonably taut post-apocalyptic survival tale that makes up for a lack of original ideas with tight pacing and solid craftsmanship. Vertical launches in approximately 1,400 U.S. theaters on Nov. 8, with openings in numerous other territories also scheduled later this year. 

The script by John Glenn, Jacob Roman and Kenny Ryan opens with a stretch of black screen, over which we hear snippets of increasingly panicked news reports. They suggest a catastrophic chain of natural disasters from which people can finally only be urged to seek higher ground. 

“Three Years Later,” onscreen text notes, the Rocky Mountains look as spectacular as ever. But as a boy who strays below the safety boundary — hoping to glimpse people other than those in his isolated settlement — discovers, they too are now host to tank-sized, fast-moving, seemingly indestructible “Reapers.” (These are basically non-flying dino-insects who make noises reminiscent of the critters in the “Alien” and “Predator” films.) Those “giant murder bugs hatched from the ground,” as one character here later puts it, have already killed off most sentient life at lower altitudes. Recklessly curious 8-year-old Hunter (Danny Boyd Jr.) is fortunate to barely avoid that fate.

But he is lonely and unhappy in “Lost Gulch Refuge,” an old mountain town whose 200 or so other current residents include no other children — nor Hunter’s mother, who did not return from an ill-fated sojourn with cranky neighbor Nina (Morena Baccarin) some time ago. That’s just one thing his father Will (Mackie) holds against Nina, a misanthropic scientist who’d persuaded his wife to accompany her in hopes of reaching a Boulder laboratory where she might devise a lethal solution to mankind’s pest problem. 

Having more or less reverted to frontier times, complete with candlelight as primary illumination after dark, this hamlet is more or less self-sustaining. But despite his adventurous streak, Hunter has periodic, serious respiration issues, and Will has just used the last filter needed to operate the oxygen machine that saves him during these unpredictable attacks. Like it or not, dad must venture down to Boulder in search of a fresh supply. Nina, as the only person who fought the monsters and lived, reluctantly agrees to accompany him, fueled by stubborn belief she can concoct a “magic bullet” that overrides their defenses. Inviting herself along in addition is Katie (Maddie Hasson), a younger woman who’s very fond of Will — and dislikes the antagonistic Nina even more than he does.

What Katie terms “Earth’s new apex predators” soon sense fresh prey once the trio cross the elevation line. Their first narrow escape is via a ski lift they’re able to render functional in the nick of time. Will has figured out a way to minimize exposure by traveling partly through old mining tunnels — but it turns out the Reapers are there too. Not everyone lives to reach the ruined city, though ultimately there is hope for our species … even if a tag sequence, keeping the door open to a possible sequel, suggests more bad news might be incoming from outer space.

Making his fourth directorial feature after contributing to the screenplays of “The Bourne Ultimatum” and “Ocean’s Twelve,” among others, Nolfi maximizes medium-scale resources to give “Elevation” a fairly expansive feel. Cinematographer Shelly Johnson takes full widescreen advantage of the magnificent Colorado scenery, while visual effects supervisor Nathan McGuinness’ nasty four-legged nemeses are seen enough to satisfy, albeit mostly held in eye-blink reserve by editor Joel Viertel. H. Scott Salinas’ big orchestral score also helps pump up a movie whose global-crisis premise is somewhat belied by the relative modesty of onscreen spectacle. 

Performances are likewise a notch above the formulaic monster movie mean, with Mackie (who also starred in Nolfi’s superior 2020 drama “The Banker”) bringing his usual charisma and conviction. Baccarin pulls off a character who proves more relatable than she initially appears, while Hasson sympathetically fills out a less-defined role. 

In the end, “Elevation” doesn’t have the novel or distinctive qualities to be truly memorable, even amongst individual setpieces — it’s conceptually a mashup of elements from “Pitch Black,” “Jurassic Park,” and the myriad dystopian-future screen visions that grow more numerous every month. But it is polished and exciting enough to make a virtue of that familiarity, at least for an entertaining hour and a half.