L Movie Review 2Giant bug movies have been a sci-fi mainstay since the 1950s (ants in 1954’s Them, a spider in 1955’s Tarantula), when a paranoid public projected its nuclear anxiety onto a variety of insects, arachnids, and other fearsome arthropods. The objects of anxiety in Elevation, the new post-apocalyptic thriller starring Anthony Mackie, are roughly the size of an SUV, come out of the ground like cicadas, and look vaguely like armored beetles. Their impenetrable scales and swift gait might remind viewers of the White Spikes from The Tomorrow War, or the Mimics of Edge of Tomorrow. They are known as “Reapers,” and their only apparent weakness is their inability to tolerate altitudes higher than 8,000 feet. That’s Elevation for you.

The movie begins with a series of news reports warning humanity of an unprecedented invasion — not from outer space but from under the earth — and before you can say “post-apocalyptic,” the remaining 5% of the human population has dispersed into various high-altitude mountain refuges to shelter from the slaughtering Reapers. Mackie plays Will, a single father whose young son (Danny Boyd Jr.) has an unspecified medical condition. Dwindling supplies force Will to descend to the nearby city of Boulder for life-saving medicine. Sculpted and stoical, Will is well-armed and determined to make the descent below “The Line,” which makes him a meaty target.

Accompanying Will is fellow survivor Nina (Morena Baccarin), a hard-drinking scientist who sizes up the journey as a suicide mission but comes along anyway, determined to discover the enemy’s weakness and fueled by a sense of survivor’s guilt. (She escaped an attack that killed Will’s wife.) A third companion, Katie (Maddie Hasson), smart and sassy, joins the posse for reasons of her own. The ingredients are all there for a classic hero’s journey, in which the protagonist accepts the call to adventure and crosses the threshold of danger to face a road of trials, with the ultimate reward within reach. There is a twist involving the nature and origin of the Reapers that neatly explains their most vexing quirks; to avoid a spoiler, suffice it to say that the groundwork is laid for a sequel and possibly a franchise, pending box office returns. 

Elevation was developed during the Covid lockdown by John Glenn, Jacob Roman, and Kenny Ryan — the team behind several of the strongest episodes of SEAL Team, the hit CBS drama starring David Boreanaz. Seasoned on series television, the trio seems to specialize in strong, heroic, well-armed men. (They are currently developing a Robin Hood series for MGM+.) Add two strong, resourceful women to the mix and you’ve got a triumvirate worth rooting for. The movie is effectively structured around a series of tense set pieces involving a ski lift, a mine, and a laboratory. The latter, effectively shot around the modernist, geometric buildings of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, features a showstopper of a shootout.  

If at any point Elevation feels like it’s treading familiar ground, that’s because it’s working firmly and proudly within the confines of a trusted B-movie formula. Like those giant bug movies of yesteryear, it pits human resourcefulness against alien evil, with the good guys cast as vulnerable underdogs racing against the clock. Director George Nolfi, who previously worked with Mackie on The Adjustment Bureau and The Banker, knows how to augment a decent action sequence with a very agile drone set-up. More importantly, he knows how to photograph the future Captain America: camera pointing slightly upward, the better to emphasize his heroic posture and impeccable shooting stance. This brand of graceful machismo, in which tender moments are balanced with explosions of badass violence, is Mackie’s stock-in-trade, and he wields it nimbly.