Anthony Mackie’s & Morena Baccarin’s Sleeper-Hit Thriller Finally Lands on Hulu

Not every movie gets a fair shot in theaters, but plenty of them get a second life once streaming audiences find them. That’s precisely the story behind one of Anthony Mackie’s more overlooked projects from the past couple of years.

The film in question is ‘Elevation,’ a post-apocalyptic action thriller that barely registered at the box office when it first hit theaters but has since built a devoted following through word-of-mouth streaming buzz. Directed by George Nolfi and co-starring Morena Baccarin, the movie has spent the better part of two years quietly gaining new fans on whatever platform happens to be hosting it.

Now it’s Hulu’s turn. ‘Elevation’ officially began streaming on the platform today, giving another wave of subscribers the chance to check out a film that critics largely dismissed but that audiences have continued to champion.

The story is set three years after mysterious creatures known as Reapers emerged and wiped out roughly 95 percent of the world’s population. Survivors were forced to relocate to mountain communities above 8,000 feet, the only altitude the predators seem unable to reach.

Mackie plays Will, a single father living in a refuge community with his son, who suffers from a lung disease that requires medication found only below “The Line,” the dangerous altitude threshold separating safety from the Reapers. Desperate to save his son, Will has no choice but to venture back down into the deadly lowlands.

He doesn’t make the trip alone. Baccarin plays Nina, a scientist who has spent years studying the Reapers and searching for a way to defeat them, while Maddie Hasson plays Katie, rounding out the trio that treks below the elevation line together. Will initially doesn’t trust Nina, but her research may end up being the key to keeping them all alive.

‘Elevation’ had a rough introduction to the world. The film earned just 3.6 million dollars domestically against an 18 million dollar production budget after Vertical released it in theaters on November 8, 2024, a box office performance that made it one of the more notable theatrical flops of Mackie’s career.

But the movie’s fortunes shifted dramatically once it moved to streaming. ‘Elevation’ first found new life on Max in February 2025, then continued building momentum with a resurgence on HBO Max months later, driven largely by curious subscribers scrolling past a familiar face in Mackie and deciding to give the sci-fi thriller a shot.

That pattern of quiet streaming success has repeated itself across multiple platforms, including a run on Amazon Prime Video, suggesting the film’s appeal was never really about theatrical marketing muscle in the first place. For a movie often compared to ‘A Quiet Place’ thanks to its tense, creature-driven survival premise, ‘Elevation’ seems to have benefited from exactly the kind of low-pressure discovery that streaming makes possible.

Behind the scenes, the film reunited Mackie with director George Nolfi, who previously worked with the actor on the 2020 drama ‘The Banker.’ The screenplay came from Kenny Ryan and Jacob Roman, with the film produced in part by Brad Fuller, whose credits include ‘A Quiet Place’ and ‘The Purge,’ a pedigree that lines up with the tense, predator-driven tone ‘Elevation’ leans into throughout its runtime.

The rest of the cast includes Shauna Earp, Rachel Nicks and Danny Boyd Jr., filling out the small, tightly wound ensemble that makes up the film’s survivor community. With a lean 92-minute runtime, ‘Elevation’ plays more like a tense, character-driven survival story than a sprawling creature feature, something that’s likely contributed to its slow-burn popularity on streaming.

Its arrival on Hulu also comes at a moment when Mackie’s profile has only grown, thanks to his ongoing run as the new lead of the Captain America franchise in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For fans who missed ‘Elevation’ during its brief theatrical run or its earlier streaming stops, Hulu now offers one more chance to see what all the sleeper-hit buzz has been about.

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