Elevation is a post-apocalyptic action thriller directed by George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau) and starring Anthony Mackie (Avengers: Infinity War), Morena Baccarin (Deadpool) and Maddie Hasson (Malignant). The film follows Mackie as a single father venturing into the dangerous world outside in order to save his son. Hasson plays Katie, someone who is close to Mackie’s character and helps him on his journey.

We had the chance to interview Hasson and Nolfi about the film. The actor discusses her approach to acting, focusing on relating to her character Katie, who is fiercely independent and desires more than being trapped in a small town. The actress trained for altitude in Colorado to prepare for the high-elevation scenes. Nolfi discusses the inspiration behind Elevation, which was driven by real-life locations in Colorado.

“I try not to think like that, because I constantly am thinking like, ‘I’m gonna mess this up,’ you know?” Hasson replied to Nerd Reactor about what she was able to bring to the movie. “So if I think like, what can I bring to this movie? Or if I go into it with a big-picture view, I will panic. But I tried to relate to Katie, which was not hard for me. I think that she has pretty relatable motivations, that she’s like a pretty fiercely independent person who desires more for herself than being trapped in the safety of this town that they’ve built for themselves, and I think that that was something that interested me from the beginning.”

The film was shot high in the mountains of Colorado, and the cast would have altitude training to help with breathing in the area.

“We had to do altitude training so that we could even breathe up there, let alone run,” Hasson said. “So it was, I think, a couple of weeks before I got to Colorado. I had to train with a trainer. And then when we got there, a week before shooting, we had to train with a trainer there running through the mountains every day.”

“The takeaway for me is always kind of the theme,” Nolfi said. “And what was interesting to me is the notion that our greatest gift as humans is our rationality, and yet that rationality, particularly collectively, when we use it together, creates nuclear weapons and climate change and AI and all sorts of things that can threaten us. So you got to tell these things as parables, right? And this is a survival story and a creature story, but then there’s gotta be a movie. It has to have something to say, or I’m not interested in doing it.”

About Elevation

The film is directed by George Nolfi and written by John Glenn, Jacob Roman and Kenny Ryan.
It’s produced by Brad Fuller, p.g.a. John Glenn, George Nolfi, p.g.a., Joel Viertel, Jeremy Kipp Walker, Natalie Sellers, Alex Black, Anthony Mackie

It stars Anthony Mackie, Morena Baccarin, Maddie Hasson and Danny Boyd Jr.

Set in the post-apocalyptic Rocky Mountains, a single father and two women venture from the safety of their homes to face monstrous creatures to save the life of a young boy.

Elevation releases on November 8, 2024.

Featured image courtesy of Vertical