Gorge, The (UK/USA, 2025)

For roughly the first half, The Gorge has all the elements of a solid, engaging thriller. It does a good job developing a mystery and establishing the characters. There’s a period of romantic playfulness as the two leads – Miles Teller’s Levi and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Drasa – develop a unique long-distance relationship. Things build nicely, leading inexorably toward the expected conflict and its associated revelations. Unfortunately, that’s where it all starts to fall apart. The Gorge’s second hour is like a fusion of elements cobbled together from various zombie movies and grafted onto the exoskeleton of Aliens. It feels derivative right up to the unremarkable ending.

That’s a shame because there’s real potential in the early-going with Levi and Drasa exhibiting a mutual voyeuristic curiosity about one another followed by a period of communication via primitive text messaging and the eventual (and inevitable) face-to-face interaction. Lurking in the background is the great unknown: What is The Gorge? And what are the creatures living in its depths that occasionally come into the light to play? As long as that remains shadowed in mystery, the film retains a sense of suspense. The buildup is fantastic. They payoff isn’t.

Levi, an ex-special forces elite sniper, and Drasa, a Lithuanian with similar skills, have never met prior to being stationed at The Gorge. He’s in the West Tower and she’s in the East Tower. Communication, although not specifically prohibited, is difficult because of the distance between the towers and the impenetrable obstacle between them: the heavily-mined chasm whose depths (and whatever lurks therein) are obscured by a persistent mist. The operatives have the same mission: shoot to kill anything that gets past the mines and the motion-sensitive guns. Levi and Drasa are gatekeepers.

Although their predecessors had no contact, Levi is immediately intrigued by his counterpart. He begins using binoculars to watch her and she returns the favor. Soon, they are communicating through a low-tech form of text messaging: she writes something in large letters on a pad of paper and holds it up for him to read and he jots down a response. Their mutual attraction develops and deepens until Levi decides to do something rash to enable a physical encounter…something that could result in an inadvertent trip into The Gorge.

The film’s elements are in director Scott Derrickson’s wheelhouse, combining science fiction, horror, and action-thriller elements. Oddly, however, it’s the offbeat romantic material that arguably works the best. The Gorge is at its strongest during the scenes when Levi and Drasa are falling for each other long-distance, culminating in the one of the most outrageous booty calls in movie history. This is truly a case where anticipation is more enjoyable than consummation…at least for the audience.

The less-is-more Jaws factor is at play here. During the film’s first half, the denizens of The Gorge are shown only briefly during an attempted raid on the towers. Although the creatures are well-designed and effectively rendered (they resemble how H.R. Giger might design a zombie), the more we see of them, the less imposing they are. This contributes to why the action sequences are so hum-drum. The revelations about The Gorge are neither shocking nor surprising. And by the time Sigourney Weaver arrives on scene (definitely not playing a Ripley-type), absurdity has taken over.

The film is a showcase for Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, who exhibit a quirky chemistry and polish up their action movie bona fides. The roles don’t demand much in the way of acting but they work hard to get us to care about the characters. There are also some fun nods to their previous work – references to Taylor-Joy’s The Queen’s Gambit and Teller’s Whiplash. The pair carries The Gorge’s first half then fade into the background when the special effects take over for hour #2.

Overall, I found the film to be somewhat disappointing – another instance of a streaming service pouring big screen dollars into a project of only middling quality. Would The Gorge have worked better in a theater where the spectacle elements could pop? Hard to say, but on a smaller screen, the narrative issues are magnified. It’s a passable way to spend a couple of hours and the interaction between Teller and Taylor-Joy allows it to work at times, but this isn’t likely to be a big draw for Apple TV+ as it slugs it out in the streaming battle trenches.

Gorge, The (UK/USA, 2025)