THE GORGE (2025)

Studio:   Apple Original Films
Director: Scott Derrickson
Writer:   Zach Dean
Producer: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill, Sherryl Clark, Adam Kolbrenner, Zach Dean, Gregory Goodman
Stars:    Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sope Dirisu, Sigourney Weaver

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two elite snipers from different nations form an unexpected romance while guarding opposite sides of a gorge they must protect against the emergence of mysterious creatures.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Presenting herself as a high-ranking government spook, Bartholomew recruits mercenary Marine sniper Levi Kane for a top-secret, yearlong assignment based on his unique profile as well as the fact he has no personal connections. In September, Levi parachutes into an undisclosed location where he meets J.D., the lone commando he will be replacing.

J.D. explains Levi’s mission is to guard an observation tower posted on the west side of an expansive gorge on behalf of Western nations. Eastern nations assign their own operative to a similar outpost on the opposite side of the gorge, but communication between the two guards is strictly forbidden, as is any outside contact at all. Since World War Two, Eastern and Western nations have carried out this joint operation in secret, even without the knowledge of their respective heads of state.

In addition to radioing monthly status reports and maintaining the automated systems that control perimeter landmines and turrets, Levi is instructed to provide a second line of defense against anything that may come out of the gorge. J.D. identifies these mysterious creatures as “hollow men.” J.D. also warns that no human has ever survived a descent into the gorge, which J.D. claims is a figurative door to Hell.

A chopper comes to pick up J.D., leaving Levi alone at the outpost. After confirming his identity, a soldier aboard the helicopter executes J.D. on Bartholomew’s orders.

In October, Levi uses binoculars to observe his counterpart in the other tower. Levi later learns the other guard is Drasa Kanaite, an elite Lithuanian sniper working for Russia.

While celebrating her birthday in November, Drasa breaks protocol by writing a message asking Levi to introduce himself, beginning ongoing wipeboard communications between the two snipers. A sudden assault from scrambling creatures interrupts their bonding moment. Working from their separate positions, Levi and Drasa eliminate the threat together. While replacing landmines the next day, Levi and Drasa are both surprised by a drone emerging from the gorge and flying away.

Levi and Drasa remotely celebrate Christmas from their respective towers. Through their continued use of binoculars and written messages, they also play chess and drums as they continue developing their mutual attraction.

In February, Levi observes Drasa mourning the death of her ill father Erikas, who had previously told her he planned to kill himself on Valentine’s Day. After Drasa says she wishes she could be with someone, Eli fires across a zipline that she secures to a tree. Using the cable to traverse the gorge, Eli joins Drasa for a rabbit pie dinner that eventually leads to physical intimacy.

The following morning, Levi returns across the zipline, but a sudden landmine explosion breaks the cable. Levi engages his parachute to descend into the gorge.

Drasa deploys her own parachute to go after Levi. After surviving raging river rapids, Drasa rescues Levi from a strange tree that traps him with long teeth and an adhesive substance.

Resembling humanoids with tree branch-like protrusions, hollow men on horseback attack the couple. After killing their attackers, Levi and Drasa notice the hollow men were wearing old military uniforms belonging to lost battalions from the 1940s.

Having lost her auto-ascender during the fall, Drasa and Levi follow the river to search for another way out of the gorge. Levi and Drasa end up in a ruined village devastated by a catastrophic event. Inside a church, they find skeletons bearing traces of intentional cyanide poisoning.

Levi and Drasa survive another creature attack before making their way to a ruined laboratory. There, they find a film featuring a scientist who explains how the hidden community was formed by a top-secret coalition of nations that were developing biochemical missiles concurrently with Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project. When an earthquake struck the location, it triggered toxic exposure that caused human DNA to merge with plants, animals, and insects, creating various mutations in addition to the hollow men.

Levi finds a modern computer identified as belonging to “Darklake.” Levi and Drasa learn they haven’t been working for their militaries like they thought, but for a private corporation using genetic research to build super-soldiers. Levi also finds a file labelled “Straydog,” which turns out to be a self-destruct protocol that can be triggered if disabled cloaking arrays expose the gorge to external detection.

On their way out of the facility, a hollow man captures Drasa. Levi follows them back to a missile silo where he rescues Drasa from the hollow man, who turns out to be Bradford Shaw, the first soldier assigned to guard the west tower decades earlier.

Levi and Drasa fight their way through enormous, mutated tree tendrils to escape the silo. They then commandeer a Jeep whose winch they use to ascend back to the surface while fending off hollow men along the way.

Upon returning to the east outpost, Levi and Drasa agree to quarantine in their respective towers for five days, which they learned is how long it would take toxic exposure to infect them. Levi tells Drasa he believes he was chosen for his assignment because his lack of personal connections made him expendable, but since meeting her, he now feels he has something to live for. Drasa proposes running away to France together, but Levi counters that they first need to destroy the gorge so no other soldiers can be sent there. Levi then tells Drasa he loves her before crossing back to his side of the gorge on a new zipline.

Bartholomew interrupts Levi’s scheduled status report over the radio to question him about activity detected in the gorge laboratory. Unaware that Bartholomew already saw him and Drasa on a hidden surveillance camera, Levi denies going into the gorge. Claiming his counterpart must have been the person who activated the lab’s systems and must therefore be neutralized, Bartholomew tasks Levi with assassinating Drasa. Levi seemingly accepts the assignment but, aware of his deception, Bartholomew assembles a team of soldiers to take out Levi.

From the other side of the gorge, Drasa shows Levi a message proclaiming her love for him. A helicopter carrying Bartholomew and her soldiers arrives, forcing Levi and Drasa to scramble.

From separate sniper positions, Levi and Drasa destroy the cloaking arrays, causing the gorge to become exposed and triggering the self-destruct protocol. A massive bomb subsequently obliterates the area. Unable to escape in time, Bartholomew’s helicopter crashes and burns.

Unaware of Levi’s fate following the explosion, Drasa finishes her five-day quarantine before escaping to Eze, France. When Levi doesn’t show up at their agreed-upon meeting place on time, Drasa follows his instructions to open a letter containing a poem written for her in the event he did not survive.

In April, Levi surprises Drasa by showing up at the seaside restaurant where she now hides out as a waitress. Levi explains it took him longer than expected to reach her due to injuries he suffered in the blast. Levi and Drasa playfully quip with each other before kissing passionately.

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Review:

Since WWII, Eastern and Western nations have been guarding something so secret, no head of state has known about it, even though their countries honor a pact to maintain the mission dating back almost 80 years. Every 365 days, a single soldier from each hemisphere is sent to an undisclosed location where observation towers are posted on either side of a massive gorge. The two operatives are to have no outside contact. They are not permitted to talk to each other, either. Their assignment is to merely monitor the area, and make sure nothing ever crawls its way out of the gorge and onto the surface.

But if America and Russia didn’t want their respective guardians to communicate, much less form a mutual attraction, they shouldn’t have recruited Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy for the operation. With model-like looks to complement their elite sniper skills, they don’t make it two months before protocol is breached and their characters, Levi and Drasa, begin using written messages and binoculars to build a romantic bond. That’s just too much Hollywood hotness to hide in a forest and expect everyone to keep their hands to themselves for 12 months.

Tours of duty start in September. October through January isn’t a particularly eventful period, other than minor moments of long-distance exchanges like drunkenly dancing on Drasa’s birthday and remotely playing chess together. A runtime tipping over two hours puts a lot of pressure on two people to carry an entire movie with minimal verbal dialogue. Teller and Taylor-Joy channel ample charm to keep “The Gorge” chugging through the rhythm’s valleys, though the gradual build to their relationship can still slow the pulse of both the pace and the viewer.

Come February, Levi and Drasa get their first physical interaction courtesy of a zipline that sends Levi across the chasm for an intimate evening with Drasa. However, it doesn’t send him back in the morning. Conveniently for the script, but inconveniently for the couple, a sudden landmine explosion snaps Levi’s cable, hurtling him into the fog-shrouded canyon below. Drasa immediately parachutes after her new love interest.

With “The Gorge” now past its midpoint, action finally ignites in earnest. The film’s second half follows Levi and Drasa’s exploration of a “lost world” whose mysteries and monsters are beyond what both of them imagined. They already knew next to nothing about their mission. What they uncover next about who sent them there, why, and what’s really down in the depths introduces more questions, though none are more dire than how Levi and Drasa will survive a nightmarish realm from which no human has ever returned.

From notable names like “Doctor Strange” director Scott Derrickson and featured actor Sigourney Weaver, to shooting in various locations spanning the globe, it’s obvious it cost millions of dollars to make “The Gorge.” Yet you can also tell the movie is styled for straight-to-streaming standards rather than as a theatrical studio thriller, in part because you can’t always see the money onscreen, literally.

Although Canada, Norway, England, and Scotland are cited among countries where production took place, it looks like a fair majority of filming occurred in front of a screen, similar to how Disney produces “Star Wars” TV. End credits list too many artists to count, with individual FX houses numbering over a dozen. “The Gorge” features several intense sequences, but not so many spectacles that this many modelers, mocappers, and technical engineers would be necessary unless they were adding computer-generated elements to virtually every frame.

With this much work being done, it’s an odd choice for darkness to diminish so much of it. Above ground, the main monsters, called “hollow men” from the T.S. Eliot poem, naturally know to only attack after sunset. Story-wise, that might make sense for them to use the cover of night. Visually, that makes less sense for an audience squinting to see creepy creations getting lost in blizzards of animated muzzle flashes and inky shadows.

Once Levi and Drasa descend into the titular location, even that set gets obscured in thick yellow mist during daytime, and thick purple smoke at night. There, the duo battles through hollow men on horseback on their way to a spooky building where remaining exposition, previously delivered by secondary characters whose only purpose is to provide information, anxiously awaits discovery. These new details include serendipitous instructions on how to destroy the gorge, a moment that immediately makes the rest of the movie a waiting game for “Chekhov’s self-destruct sequence” to activate.

Since “The Gorge” finds contentment as a homogenized action-adventure, formula provides enough economy fuel to hold a steady speed through routine romance as well as predictable plotting based on boilerplate beats. Just don’t get caught waiting for the film to exceed the posted limit in any individual lane. “The Gorge” is a place where even the world’s most resourceful mercenary can still be a distressed damsel in need of heroic rescue. The weird world created for “The Gorge” has potential for further fiction, although it might work better in a book, where an active imagination can shine brighter lights on the creatures and concepts than the movie’s limited lighting and narrowed narrative ever do.

Review Score: 60

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