In Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge, Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy play two of the best snipers in the world representing, respectively, the superpowers of the West and East. They’ve been assigned to a year-long rotation manning guard towers overlooking a mist-covered valley several thousand meters across and possibly just as deep. Neither of the characters know exactly what their mission is or where they’re being sent — although Teller’s former Marine, Levi, guesses northern Europe based on the season and positioning of the stars — or even what’s in the titular gorge, as this information falls between “on a need to know” basis and “the less you know the better.” J.D. (Sope Dirisu), the British soldier that Levi is relieving at the end of his tour of duty, explains his daily responsibilities and warns against making contact with the opposing tower — as well as offering up the outpost’s recipe for home-distilled vodka — but as to what this all means or what all the automated guns and mines fastened to the steep walls below are meant to keep out… well, that remains a mystery. From a mission readiness standpoint, this is all rather absurd, particularly as it later becomes clear that the powers that be view this very important assignment as a “one way ticket” in order to preserve its secrecy. But as an exercise in Lovecraftian horror, it’s a hoot. The film gradually doles out morsels of tangible information, but it weaponizes our curiosity and anxieties of the unknown for longer than one might reasonably expect from a genre that tends toward instant gratification.
Levi’s counterpoint on the eastern tower is Drasa, a Lithuanian sharpshooter (Taylor-Joy, employing a Natasha Fatale accent while dying her famed straw-colored hair as black as her character’s combat boots) who’s so committed to the job that the film introduces her having burrowed inside the sheer face of a cliff in order to assassinate a Belarusian arms dealer. For months Levi and Drasa tend to their respective sides doing what amounts to maintenance; replacing the mines that get set off during the night, tending to their gardens, ensuring the integrity of the digital “cloakers,” which conceal the gorge from satellites and passing airplanes. Occasionally, some sort of monstrous-looking humanoid creature will attempt to scale the cliff and the countermeasures and booby-traps spring to life, but that almost feels incidental. After months of little to no action, even a couple hardened killers are liable to get bored and lonely. Peering through their viewfinders, Drasa and Levi catch sight of one another and, in the interest of preserving their sanity, decide to bend the rules a little. Initially, this involves sharing pithy sentiments on a dry erase board, but when you’re a trained marksman and have a high-powered rifle at your disposal (not to mention an endless supply of booze), flirtation takes on a more dangerous quality. This may be the first time the “William Tell” trick has been employed to let a girl know that you like her.
The script for The Gorge by Zach Dean placed on The Black List back in 2020, and in light of what was happening in the world, it’s easy to see why it resonated. The film is at its best when it explores trying to make an emotional connection with another person while living in isolation; where the urge to reach out and be embraced by someone becomes overwhelming and your only connection to humanity is viewed at a distance through assorted optical intermediaries. Neither Teller nor Taylor-Joy are particularly credible as hardened killers, but they excel at something arguably more important: generating credible chemistry with one another despite barely sharing the same physical space. Much of the film’s first hour is preoccupied with the characters’ mounting infatuation from afar, furtive glances and long-distance hijinks that practically play as Zoom dates (it has not gone unnoticed that two of the activities that Levi and Drasa engage in are competitive drumming and playing chess, almost certainly nods to the roles that made Teller and Taylor-Joy household names). There’s palpable ache to the distance between the characters, and it’s a testament to the film that by the time Levi cooks up an insanely reckless scheme to traverse the divide, the viewer’s as eager to see these two kids get together as Levi and Drasa are. What follows is every bit as romantic as one could hope — Drasa even digs up a suit jacket and tie for Levi to wear — culminating in a candle-lit dance to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Spitting off the Edge of the World,” a nice reminder that, as far as movie magic goes, nothing beats two attractive actors appearing to fall in love on screen.
On the face of it, Derrickson is a counterintuitive choice to direct The Gorge; he’s best known for relatively low-budget horror films like Sinister and The Black Phone, as well as making the first Doctor Strange film. Here he demonstrates a keen sense for visual storytelling and moments of quiet reflection, which exists alongside the incidental world-building and extensive special effects required to sell the central premise. But the question of what’s in the gorge can only remain unanswered for so long, and there’s a dramatic shift in the film around the midway point when Levi, and then Drasa after him, ventures inside. The Gorge was never not a creature feature, but its moves become more obvious and the volume gets turned way up — the score, by the perennially better-than-the films-they-contribute-to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, becomes less plaintive piano chords and more siren- and techno distortion-influenced as the film progresses — as we come face to face with the monsters being kept at bay, with the film becoming your basic sci-fi shoot-em-up. The Gorge draws visual inspiration from the likes of Annihilation, The Thing, and Aliens — not for nothing, Sigourney Weaver turns up here as a poker-faced defense contractor who shares many of the cutthroat qualities of the Paul Reiser character in that last title — but what the film mostly resembles is a video game. The characters uncover secret laboratories with expository filmstrips and mow down waves of creepy crawlies that look like human skulls that have sprouted spider legs, plus there’s a ticking clock element that’s introduced and a series of escalating threats that function like boards that need to be cleared before you can advance.
It would be unfair to say the film betrays itself with this turn — one doesn’t watch a film about assassins guarding “the gate to hell” and expect two hours of slow dancing and sharing poetry — but The Gorge begins to feel rather common the longer it continues; its choices feel compulsory and undertaken with little enthusiasm after marching to the beat of its own drum for such a long and enjoyable stretch of time. What had been relaxed, contemplative, and moody becomes more conventionally rah rah and hurried as whatever might have been idiosyncratic about the film escapes like air through a pinhole leak — how else to explain scoring a late action sequence to a nu metal cover of “All Along the Watchtower,” which seemingly is on the soundtrack only because of the tie-in of its title. The Gorge becomes less interested in exploring the ideas it introduces as part of “raising the stakes” and instead becomes entirely about moving from point A to point B while combatting CGI mutants. All of which makes assessing Derrickson’s film a bit tricky. How does one quantify a film that for half its length is as charming and surprising a would-be blockbuster (alas, the film is skipping theaters entirely and premiering on AppleTV+) as has been released in ages, only to be followed by another hour of computer-generated sludge? Does the latter negate the former or make it all the more impressive that it somehow survived the development process at all? The Gorge smacks of compromise, but as a showcase for its two young stars, it’s a little bit of a revelation, allowing Teller and Taylor-Joy to be vulnerable and stoic as well as playful and smoldering. One is left with the choice to bemoan the squandered promise of the film’s earlier scenes, or to recognize that when it’s good, it’s pretty great. Sometimes half a loaf is enough.
DIRECTOR: Scott Derrickson; CAST: Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu; DISTRIBUTOR: Apple TV+; STREAMING: February 14; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 7 min.
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