Will has a job to do. It’s a frightening job.
Three years ago when the monsters—half charging rhino, half tentacled battle tank—first appeared and began devastating the worlds human population, the only major concern was survival. It was a losing concern. Bullets and every other explosive ordinance bounced off these beasts like so many spit balls.
Then some lucky soul accidentally discovered that the unstoppable creatures couldn’t venture any higher than 8,000 feet above sea level. So people lucky enough to live near a mountain quickly grabbed what they could and ran.
Few survived. But Will and his family were among them. They ran to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and became part of a small community that made their lives as self-sustainable as possible: hunting, gathering, building shelters. Anyone who ventured back below 8,000 feet—Will’s wife, Tera, among them—were soon added to the victims list.
But now, Will is faced with a problem. His son, Hunter, has a condition that demands he sleep with an oxygen ventilator. And the filters for that device are all used up. Hunter is suffering. He may not survive. And the closest source for new filters is a hospital down in Boulder.
The problem is, Boulder is 12 miles away … and 3,000 feet down.
Down is death. The completely empty streets of Boulder are a testament to that.
Will, however, has no choice. He must go. He will find a way.
Will asks Nina to join him on his trip. She’s a physicist and the only person who’s actually survived an encounter with the creatures. In fact, Tera died while trying to help Nina find a way to battle the monsters. So, Will presses Nina to help him. All of that history means that Will and Nina aren’t the best of friends, but as they journey together, they come to understand and appreciate each other. And they put their lives on the line for each other.
In fact, the whole film centers in on their heroic attempt not only to save Hunter, but in a sense, rescue humanity.
Will is a good father who loves and corrects his son. When the community learns of Will’s trip and Hunter’s dire need, they chip in whatever scarce resources they have that might help. In fact, Will’s good friend Katie volunteers to join Will on his journey despite the danger. She repeatedly sacrifices to help their quest find success.
At one point, Nina remembers her now deceased family and laments that she let insignificant things get in the way of important connections with her kids.
Early on, Will, Katie and Nina voice their thoughts about the seemingly indestructible creature’s origin and human-killing focus. (Animals are left untouched.) And one of them wonders if the “Jesus freaks” were right and the monsters are some sort of heavenly judgement on a corrupt mankind. They collectively dismiss that idea.
It appears, though, that Nina is a person of faith. She crosses herself while praying at one point. Will asks her, “You still believe in God?” “I’m stubborn,” she replies. “What’d you ask for?” Will continues. “Revenge.” Nina also lays an object at a statue of an angel as a sort of tribute.
Nina coarsely talks about Katie’s desire to bed Will.
The massive, quick-moving and roaring creatures are a constant and destructive threat. We hear that 95% of humanity was obliterated within a month of the first attack. And we see the creatures chase human foes and rip through obstacles, including vehicles, walls and a mountain ski lift.
Most of the attacks we witness made on humans, however, are limited to thumping hits and pummeling attacks. Will and his compatriots all fall from a creature-attacked ski lift, for instance. Someone is grabbed and pinned to a wall by a tentacle and only fights free when that limb is chopped by an ax. And the heroes barely escape with their lives on numerous occasions. The one exception is a young woman who is impaled by a creature’s long tentacle and then dragged, screaming, along a shadowed tunnel (though onscreen blood is kept to a minimum).
That said, we hear of people dying in horrible ways and witness plenty of gun-blazing battles and explosive attacks. The questing trio, for instance, finds a grenade launcher and ammunition in an abandon military vehicle. They hit the creatures with massive explosions and gun fire.
We also see groups of fighters shooting and large explosions from a distance. In another instance, Will shoots a group of oxygen tanks in a hospital and blows a creature through a window to fall several stories to the ground.
A speeding vehicle crashes and flips leaving its driver unconscious and dangling upside down. A monster’s CO2-sensing monster appendage is pushed into a small area where Will and his friends are hiding. They are all forced to hold their breath while it slowly explores.
The dialogue is peppered with about a dozen f-words, 10 s-words and three or four uses of the word “b–ch.” God’s and Jesus’ names are misused five times in total. (One of those uses combines God’s name with “d—n,” while another blends Jesus’ name with an f-word.)
Katie and Will share a couple bottles of beer. Nina has a moonshine still and not only drinks small jugs of the alcohol, but sips from a flask filled with it. As Will, Katie and Nina journey on, the stop at an abandon cabin and find bottles of single malt whiskey that they drink.
Will injects his suffering son with an unidentified drug that helps him sleep.
None.
Elevation is one of those sci-fi thrillers that left me wondering … why? Why do some filmmakers make the choices they do?
For the most part, this pic has a lot going for it. It has an exciting premise of an “unstoppable” monster that will attack anyone below 8,000 feet of elevation. It features a well-paced and heroic save-the-ones-you-love storyline that ends with a twist, one that’s reminiscent of films such as A Quiet Place. And its central actors, Anthony Mackie, Maddie Hasson and Morena Baccarin, play their roles with all the grit and palpable fear you could ask for.
The filmmakers even kept the potentially goopy mess of a flick featuring super-deadly, tanklike monsters to a minimum. For all intents and purposes, this could have been a PG-13 thriller that teens and their parents might have enjoyed together.
However, Elevation also comes packing some completely unnecessary harsh profanity, too. We’re hit with a rat-tat-tat of f-bombs for no better reason than to define a character as someone who enjoys swearing. Oh, and to earn the pic an “edgier” R-rating, I suppose.
It seems an irksome choice. One that will keep discerning moviegoers at bay. If only the filmmakers had followed their own movie’s warnings and taken … the higher road.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
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