"Elevation", and how to be so hated when you do not even deserve it

December 3, 20241306 words

Osnar Chávez

It is kind of amazing how we, as an audience, love hating. I have heard really little about this movie Elevation, but it was nothing good. And, yes, perhaps is kind of a floppy and simplistic movie, but it does its work better than we give it praize for. Is particularly weird if we consider how much people liked Deadpool and Wolverine, which, just to present an example, is by far a more contradictory and cinematographically shallow film.

Elevation is the story of Will (Anthony Mackie [Falcon]) and his son Hunter (Danny Boyd Jr.), which both live in a little village on the top of a mountain from which they cannot go down. It turns out that three years ago an army of indestructible and gigantic hipopota-beetlesque monsters came out of the ground and started killing all humans, but these weird creatures could not go over the 2400 meters of altitude, which makes this high places the only safe zones. When Hunter's oxygen filters run out, Will is forced to go to an abandoned hospital bellow the safe altitude, so his friend Katie (Maddie Hudson) is going with him, and also are helped by Nina (Morena Baccarin [Vanessa in the Deadpool movies]), a physicist that has an idea of how they could kill this unbeatable foes.

This picture was marketed with the "hook" that it was produced by the producers of A Quiet Place, which never is a good sign. It is always a desperate attempt to capitalize in some people who, in most cases of the actual industry, lack any creative influence or artistic sensibility. In this case, to make matters worst, it is to its detriment, because the movie at the beginning is so parodically similar to A Quiet Place that the producers almost sue themselves. Yet, and thankfully, Elevation eventually finds a way through character dynamics and its high concept to differentiate itself from Krasinsk 's first, and really well achieved, picture.

In comparisson with this movie is kind of a downgrade. The characters are less developed and have weaker relationships, and the actors could have had a lot more chemistry between them. Also, the spore-head-demogorgons of 2018's horror flick have a pretty cool gimmick and the tense atmosphere they creat is really oppressive. Yet, at least on the begining, Elevation manages to keep its monsters more mysterious and less organic in its appearance. This generates expectation efficiently. Just seeing trees move, points-of-view of the creature flying in the forest like an The Evil Dead spirit, the pure fear of characters that only have access to a scame to imagine the whole kaiju, and its red intense light that lets you see them without doing so directly makes you crave to be able to see this creatures directly. Sadly, these monsters do not shine as bright as they can, it is so unatural these insectoid triceapots with six legs that move backwards as me Mammut Megazord in the bad Power Rangers movie, that the short and close aspects of these creatures do not really let you get more than a quick glimpse of a black CGI mass.

Returning to the characters, they are not as bad as you will expect. Sure, the script treats them kind of one-noted, filling them with cheesy dialogue inside their chests, and their purpose in the story is pretty obvios and absolutely nothing new. Hunter is the kid just there to motivate his father to action, some character is just meant to be a tool for raising the stakes and having a dark midpoint, and everybody is willing to help Will because he is: The Main Character :O; The Asam Al Gaib's (Paul Atreidis in Dune) kind of way. Even with this limitations, the film manages to give every character a distinctable personality or roll, with changing and evolving relationships, and giving them flaws to overcome. Simple and predictable, but gives a little kind of arch to them and enough dramatic involvement to keep you invested in what is happening.

This could also be attributed to a very clear stylistic desition of using great wide shots of sublime nature. The direction rarely put the action in close to the characters to see their reactions, everything is seen from the distance. We are not meant to feel an adrenaline rush in these scenes, we are meant to feel a catartic and overwhelming situation of seeing these characters, mortal creatures and the nature as this same entity so unaltered by these miniscules events. It is not the typicall action movie with characters that defy all odds in a Monster Hunter kind of way, but in a more atmospheric, low cooking and almost spiritual kind of way; with its obvious Hollywood exceptions of plain over-the-top action.

The director is trying his best to support himself on all his departments with diverse levels of achievement. The cinematography is not the best achieved one, but there are a couple camera movements really inmersive and flashy. The lighting is kind of boring and the production design, with the monsters exception, is completely uninspired. There is an alternatic montage almost in the climax, almost in some kind of way working as a paralel one, but in other times, such as nightmares and memories that torment the characters are just edited in a lazy way. Some scenes are very propisitive and unique, but in others the CGI looks incompleted and lack any cinematographic dept.

The score is also a complicated subject. It remembers me a lot of the main song in the Marvel Show Echo, but with no lyrics and without a drop, just a construction that takes you nowhere. The song is effective, it do transmits you a sort of sensation of farming, isolated, and underdog american town; it is a racist insult of being a redneck hymn. It works in the context of the film, gets you in the mood, but is so ridicolously similar to the mentioned song that you just wish you could hear that instead of this reiterative and without drop less iconic version.

Also, at the ends, there is a plot twist, that more than do anything for this movie, promises and sets up a sequel. Is difficult to ignore how ridiculously similar is to Pacific Rim twist (and whole plot really), and if not even Guillermo del Toro could make a sequel with that premise, it results like a loss and naive cause to try to achieve it with this film that nobody really saw. Yet, the end credits have a map (topographic because everything has to do with altitude) that starts to colorate to represent how the set-up of the last scene expands through space, in a really useful and borrowed, but made own, idea from Rise of The Planet of the Apes.

As a final reference, the last shot before the credits is a mixture of the last shot in Jordan Peel 's Us and the begining of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. It is so weird that this aparently shallow and cashgrab of a movie do have such a wide variety of references from a whole lot of movies of different backgrounds.

Elevation is not a great movie, but is far for being the piece of sh*t some people are trying to make it seem. The director kind of (sometimes) has an idea of what he is doing, and (some) character work is rather solid for today's standards. It did not changed how I see movies and possibly I will forget in two months this picture even existed, but in the cinema, I had a great time. And, if there is a theme in this film, it is to be hopeful that things will got better, and at the same time you enjoy the little things; (I hope she will see the average with that perspective…).