Elevation

Post-apocalyptic survivors find refuge in the Rocky Mountains to hide from giant, insect-like creatures that can't live above 8,000 feet. However, when one of them needs life-saving supplies, they will risk everything, and venture down into the... (Archer voice) danger zone!

When huge bug-like monsters suddenly emerged from deep underground, humanity was almost completely wiped within the month. Nearly impossible to kill, and seemingly impervious to bullets–which basically rendered America useless–the creatures were dubbed Reapers.

Three years later, the last survivors of humanity live in scattered communities 8,000 feet above sea level, the magic number that the Reapers can't go above.

One of those communities is the Lost Gulch Refuge, which overlooks Boulder, Colorado. Will (played by Captain America) lives there with his son, Hunter, who has the asthma real bad. It's so bad he's about to run out of the filters for what looks like the futuristic CPAP he wears to sleep. This is distressing to Will, who is already prone to having a whiskey or two each night before bed, as he is haunted by the death of his wife, Tara, who was killed by Reapers while trying to help the local mad scientist, Nina (played by the lovely Morena Baccarin), when they journeyed down the mountain over a year ago in an effort to help Nina find the Reapers' weakness.

Chekhov's Filter is a literary device where, if a preternaturally precocious child needs some kind of life-saving filter or he will die, and the only way to get more of these filters is to venture into danger, then he will soon run out of those filters.

This is what happens, and so Will, Nina, and Redshirt Lady set off to get more filters, and maybe, if they're very very lucky, also discover the literal magic bullet needed that will destroy the Reapers once and for all, thereby returning Earth to its rightful rulers.

A Quiet Place. A Quiet Place Part 2. A Quiet Place: Day One. Bird Box. Bird Box Barcelona. The Darkest Hour. The Silence. Probably a whole bunch more that I'm forgetting. Now there's Elevation, a watered down, uninspired riff on better movies that weren't that good either.

Elevation is the latest entry from a recently popular subgenre of sci-fi survival horror where the basic idea is that some generic monster has ravaged the planet because they're really fast and tough and have sharp claws, but the thing is, while they may be blind or something, the monsters can also do something else really well, like maybe they have a great sense of smell or something.

So, just to play out the idea... humanity soon discovers that whenever someone farts, even if it's not that stinky or loud, it will lead a monster straight to them, and then it will tear them to pieces. The title of this particular version would of course be... Silent, but Deadly. The main part of the film is several scenes where a bunch of dirty humans are all huddling in fear in the ruins of one of our great cities, all of them squirming because they got the Bubble-Gut real bad, but bad news... there's a monster prowling nearby, everything is quiet except for the squeaking floorboards overhead as the monster hunts for humans, so the petrified humans dare not relax their bungholes... but then someone does! phhhffferrrrtttt! Oh no! P.U.! Plus, the monster attacks! Run! Fart while running! And so, faced with a world where one can no longer fart freely, the people dispair...

Truly, it's humanity's darkest hour.

But then, this really flatulant guy, while he is living in an isolated house with his family–as well as a ton of precariously stored old mason jars, each one with one of the family's farts sealed inside them, which during the big action sequence are all knocked over, releasing a cloud of trapped farts and drawing every monster for miles–discovers that the monsters' greatest weapon, their ability to detect even the smallest amount of methane, just so happens to be their greatest weakness too! What? Shocking, but true! Before the monsters arrived, he was the world's leading Smellologist, and now, his research finally pays off when, by pure happenstance, he discovers that a massive fart will blow out the monster's olfactory receptors, killing the beast!

Now, all he and his family have to do, is fire up the old radio station, the one that's located on the other side of the Monster's most scent-free hunting zone, and let the whole world know... Eat your beans, people! Let 'em rip!

And thus, do the humans around the world fart. They fart as one! And as the monsters die, we are reminded that beans are not only good for your heart...

They're our oldest friends.

But I digress...

Not only does Elevation come along at the tail end of a genre trend that really should've been put out to pasture long ago, it's also one of the laziest versions, as it's basically written like a video game.

From the specific goal and the time clock (your son needs new filters or he will die, so hurry), to the safe areas (it's safe to rest above 8000 feet), to the early warning detector (when bad guys are near, the compass points their way), to the arbitrary limitations (don’t over-exert yourself, if the heart gauge is in the red zone, you’re putting out too much CO2, and they track CO2), to gearing up (here’s some armor piercing rounds for your journey from my personal stash, my friend), to finding weapon upgrades when you search (you find a grenade launcher in this old jeep), to the mini-puzzles (find the right order of switches to turn on the ski lift), to the cutscenes (Hit A to toggle through flashback to the last time you saw your wife), to idiot NPCs being suddenly stupid (Katie, wait, don't run ahead! Katie… Noooooo!), to very helpful and very conveniently placed items (shoot the oxygen tanks, they explode!), to the various levels having different environments (the last level was a forest, the next level is underground, and the level after that is a ruined hospital!), if it turned out that this script was once a video game, I would not be surprised.

So, yeah. This movie is bad.

Dull. Uninspired. Uniteresting. And that's it.

There's just nothing here, plus the reveal behind the monsters is so dumb. So dumb. Especially as it only provides an even worse end-credits stinger. Obviously there will probably be a sequel at some point, even though there shouldn't be, as Hollywood never met an existing-IP potential franchise it didn't like, and when it happens, I will bet anything it will be called Elevation 2: Higher Ground.

Thumbs down. Extended fart noise.