"Elevation" Review

To quote Morrissey, stop me if you've heard this one before: Monsters have wiped out virtually the entirety of the human race leaving a remnant clinging to life while coping with the specific rules of the threat. Sure sounds like A Quiet Place, right? While that sleeper hit has already spawned a sequel and prequel installment, Elevation is the first outright knockoff that I can think of.

This time the gimmick is literally unstoppable killing machine monsters called Reapers (super original name there!) have burst from below ground and killed everyone. Their one weakness is they can't go any higher than 8000 feet, so after a few years handy white rock lines and fence posts have been placed to tell survivors when they're crossing the line of death or safety, depending on which way you're headed.

In the Rocky Mountains lives Will (Anthony Mackie), a widower whose wife was killed by the beasts and lives with his young son, Hunter (Danny Boyd Jr.). Next door lives Nina (Morena Baccarin), a hard-drinking misanthrope of a scientist constantly trying to discover a way to kill the Reapers. 

Hunter has a lung condition requiring filters for an oxygen machine while he sleeps and of course the supply runs out. The hospital in Boulder, CO will have plenty, but it's below the line. Nina demands to come along because she has a theory about the Reapers and how to kill them, but requires chemicals in her lab in Boulder. There's bad blood between Will and Nina for fairly predictable reasons, but he agrees to let her tag along. Katie (Maddie Hasson) is a tomboyish hunting pal of Will's who also invites herself along.

While the route only dips below the line at a couple of places before the final long leg into Boulder, it's no surprise that they manage to run into Reapers and it won't be much of a surprise who gets killed, who survives and how. While director George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau) does an OK job trying to keep the tension up, the committee-written script doesn't have enough originality to really keep the mystery of the Reapers going and when they're finally explained, it's mostly to set up a sequel that will never happen and begs a question that the 8000-foot limit being arbitrary shouldn't have been an impediment at all. (See below the trailer for a spoiler about this.)

Clocking in at a tidy 91 minutes, at least Elevation doesn't try to pad out the proceeding too much. The performances are OK considering the thinness of the writing, but if Baccarin was actually drinking as much as Nina is portrayed as guzzling, she wouldn't been looking that choice.

 While A Quiet Place elevated the post-Apocalyptic monster movie genre in a surprising way, Elevation is strictly plodding along in the valley of adequacy.

Score: 5/10.  Catch it on cable.

 

 >>>> SPOILER ALERT!!! <<<<< 

 

 

 The Reapers are revealed to be alien robots and a mid-credits scene shows three "meteorites" in the night sky - presumably alien ships approaching Earth with updated models to finish the eradication of carbon-based life forms infesting the third planet in the system. But why was there a limit in the first place? If you're going to depopulate a world, why leave the high ground as a refuge? Set the height limit to 25,000 feet to cover Mt. Everest or just not have one at all.

>>>>> END SPOILERS <<<<