Directed by The Adjustment Bureau’s George Nolfi and starring Anthony Mackie and Morena Baccarin, new monster action thriller Elevation, sees the world decimated by mysterious monsters. The only habitable place left for humanity is in the high mountains, above 8000 feet. Below that, dwell the creatures that killed 95% of the human population less than three years ago. To save the life of his young son, a father (Mackie) is forced to venture below ‘The Line’ with a scientist (Baccarin) he despises, but who just might hold the key to defeating the monsters, and a young woman determined to keep them both alive long enough to save the human race.
We sat down with Nolfi to find out more about the creation of the genuinely brilliant creatures, creating a post-apolcalyptic world and working with Anthony Mackie…
What was it like creating the post-apocalytpic world of Elevation?
This is my first sci-fi action movie and I was definitely interested in the first part of the movie being a real delving down into what it would be like to live in a world where 95% of the human population had been killed. The real challenge was to create an aftermath three years later that felt real. If you don’t have a gigantic budget, and this was definitely not a gigantic budget, that is challenging.
We were helped enormously by the location, which is an existing, tiny town in Colorado. The fact that it was a few miles as the crow flies to the Great Plains allowed for those big shots where you can be like ‘oh, here’s the town, and where it’s situated’. You can see where the monsters would be. All of that was really helpful. The fact that the town is dirt roads, doesn’t have any light posts, and that the cabins are old mining cabins, all really helped.
Then it’s just imagining with the writers about how these people survive. They’re in a world where 95% of the humans are gone, and there are no power plants. There’s nothing getting belched into the air. Animals and flora flourishes as well. I really was inspired by looking at photos of Chornobyl and how, 30 years on, it was like a vast wilderness.
There’s plenty of action in Elevation. What was it like doing those scenes?
It’s my first action movie, really and that’s definitely part of the reason I wanted to do it. There are three really big action scenes in this, arguably, four.
If I had twice the budget, I probably would have put more action in. I would have shown, instead of a black screen at the front of the movie and characters talking about the actual invasion, I would have shown Anthony Mackie and his family before the monsters came.
But you have to work within the confines of what you have. One of the biggest things is how you set up the characters and this world, and do it in a way that doesn’t outweigh its welcome. So, if you really want to have characters who feel like real people, and you really want to understand how these towns interact with each other, that takes some time. It’s pretty non stop once they go below the line and they have their first encounter with the monsters. It’s kind of like a big action scene and a tiny little rest for a scene or two, and then another big action scene.
What was it like to develop the monsters in Elevation?
Well, the basic notion you start with for a monster to be scary is it has to tie into our subconscious or DNA-level fears. We’re afraid of falling, we’re afraid of fire, we’re afraid of predators, and we’re afraid of insects. So it would be hard to create a scary monster that looks like Bambi, or Lassie haha.
So I basically spent hours online finding images that I thought were particularly horrifying. Of predators that are ready to strike, or insects, and I gave that to the visual effects people, and then they started generating ideas. The most challenging thing is, once you create something that’s scary in a photograph, how does it move in a way that looks scary? Because when you see a big cat move, it has a logic to it, and your brain is just attuned to say ‘okay, that is dangerous’. So, how do you create that in something that’s completely artificial? That’s one of the real artistic aspects of what the visual effects people do.
Is there any part of the Elevation universe that you wish you could have expanded on?
If I had millions more dollars, I would have started in the current world, with a sort of happy family. And really giving you two or three minutes of this is a normal family. Anthony has a great life, get to know the wife, get to know the parents in-law, and then there’s a phone call to get out of the city, they’re on the hills that are overlooking the city. So if you get out of the city, that means you’re going to go up. So it sort of explains all that. And then you look out and you see stuff, and then monsters come so that’s a sequence that would explain a lot so that the initial stuff in the town could be a little shorter. You don’t have to set things up with words. You’ve seen it, and it would root you in the character. That’s probably the main thing I would do.
And then the next thing is just anything in the climax on the hill, when she’s shooting the monsters. Just expand on that scene. That’s something that for people watching a movie, it shouldn’t matter, right? It’s like I have my two hours, or hour and a half, did you entertain me or not? But when you’re making it, so much of it is just how much time do I have to shoot it? And how much money do I have to do stuff? And there’s just a huge difference between the resources that you have when you’re making an independent movie that is reaching for the sorts of things that studios do. Like big action and CGI monsters, a studio version or a streamer version of this movie would have cost, I don’t know, five times more? Just imagine what I could do with that.
What was it like working a third time with Anthony Mackey?
The familiarity obviously makes things faster, and you avoid misunderstanding. It hasn’t happened a lot when I’m directing, but when I’ve been on sets as a writer, particularly when you’ve come in as you’re trying to fix a problem, it can get very tense. And, because you’re losing the light, or it’s going to start raining and is of the essence, you don’t have a lot of time to debate something. As a director, your principal partner, when you’re actually shooting a scene, is the actor, and for them to do something that lands, it has to make sense to them. So it’s really helpful to be able to go to Anthony in his trailer, say, like ‘hey, I got an hour, so I want to condense this thing and do this. Does that work for you?’ and have him be like ‘yeah, man, I got you.’ That helps, as opposed to ‘why do you have an hour?’.
I’ve been lucky and have had really good relationships with actors generally, but obviously when you’ve worked with somebody three times, and you see him socially, and he’s a sort of quasi-godfather to my kid, that’s helpful. That’s really nice. We’re going to do another one too, by the way. We’re already talking about what the fourth one’s gonna be.
What will your fourth movie with Anthony Mackie be? Will it be similar to this?
It will be completely different, and we have ideas, but I can’t talk about them…!
You’ve worked on a few genre movies. What is it about genre that appeals to you as a filmmaker?
I think the idea that you can show something that is real-world to itself, but is not our world allows you to get at the deepest underlying issues in society.
For me, when I read this script, more than anything, I liked the idea of being able to do a Garden of Eden metaphor. What would the world be like if humans were just a tiny part of it? There would be animals running wild, clean air and so forth and then when the monsters come… what do they represent? To me, this is what rationality creates. Whether it’s nuclear weapons or artificial intelligence or economic activity that causes climate change, we create our own destruction, and then we need to use that rationality to undo that destruction. That to me, is really profound. It’s one of the main things that human beings have to sort through.
If you pick up a newspaper or you watch a news broadcast, all the issues you’re seeing are tied to the idea of human beings using their rationality to achieve things, and then the conflict that comes from that, or the destruction that ultimately comes from that. So you’re, you’re talking about the most important stuff that’s going on in the world, and yet you’re talking about it in a context that’s completely removed. That’s what science fiction allows you to do.
Elevation will be released on Prime Video on 8 Feb.