When first announced, “The Gorge” from director Scott Derrickson (“The Black Phone”) was mysteriously touted, without any other details, as a “high-action, genre-bending love story. And the good news is, the movie, spanning several genres—including horror, thriller, action, romance, sci-fi-ish elements, etc.— lives up to that promise. The bad news, however, is the movie lives up to that promise.
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Built on a rather silly, high-concept, but initially intriguing, “The Gorge” starts with recruitment. The enigmatic and imposing Bartholomew (Sigourney Weaver)— CIA? High-level government agent? It’s purposefully unclear—approaches and engages Levi (Miles Teller), a world-class sniper and highly-trained loner operative, for a secret mission.
Highly lucrative, the tradeoff is that details are kept resolutely mysterious. But when Levi arrives, the operative he is replacing and relieving from his duty, J.D. (Sope Dirisu), runs it down for him. Levi is appointed to a post in a gigantic guard tower on one side of a vast and highly classified gorge in an unknown country. On the opposite side of this massive chasm is another word, class marksman and operative, and their job, as unbelievable as it seems, is protecting the world from an undisclosed, mysterious evil that lurks within the depths of this massive gorge.
Written by Zach Dean (“Tomorrow War,” “Fast X”), where “The Gorge” differs from many of these types of genre films because, at its heart, it is a love story. Because on the other side of the gorge guarding the opposite tower is Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy), a Russian operative on par with Levi’s skills and deadly aim.
While the two are not supposed to talk, engage or leave their stations, their post is a yearlong, and Drasa gets bored, lonely and bends the rules.
Before that, there are sequences where Levi and Drasa have to defend the gorge from mysterious “Hollow Men,” tree-like decrepit creatures trying to scale the walls.
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Eventually, the film turns into a clever meet-cute, the two getting to know each other, flirt and connect via written-out messages read by high-powered telescopic binoculars. Sharing music through speakers, intimate stories, and flexing their shooter skills, they eventually devise an inventive way to traverse the gorge, and soon, Levi is rappelling across on a rope.
They cook, drink, and dance—a charming musical sequence involving the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Spitting Off the Edge Of The World”— but the movie really begins in earnest when Levi, on his way back from Drasa’s side of the gorge, is cut down by the creatures and falls into this immeasurable unknowable pit.
For genre heads, this is probably where the movie kicks into high gear. Still, anyone interested in the more charismatic and human elements of the film is left to fend for themselves in a CGI slop of mystical spooky fog (shades of “Doctor Strange” and some of the other horror films Derrickson has done) and dilapidated tree-man figures, and other creaky monsters trying to kill Levi and Dasa.
In truth, “The Gorge” was never impressive to begin with; the initially intriguing clandestine military element gets silly when combined with this seemingly spooky and otherworldly quality of demons rising up from hell. But at least the flirty first act—aside from some pretty out-of-place needle drops, aside from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs one—felt more novel.
In the depths of the abyss below, “The Gorge” mostly turns into a high-concept action film that’s so dull, predictable and ugly to look at it’s extremely easy to tune out and have your mind go on autopilot while the otherwise charismatic Teller and Taylor-Jones are wasted. Together, they must use their skills to stop a cataclysmic that might descend the rest of humanity into darkness! Yawn.
While eventually revealed to be something more akin to the sci-fi genre with military experiments, while technically not supernatural, the movie and Derrickson can’t help but imbue it with some of those aesthetic notes either, adding yet another genre dimension to the film. And it feels like, how many genres are you going to sandwich into this thing?
Will their love defeat the forces of evil that are actually revealed to be something more cravenly capitalistic in nature? I already plunged to my death in the ravine long ago just to put me out of my bored misery. [D+]