If you live long enough you start asking yourself big, big questions, like… what is the meaning of life? Are we alone in the universe? And what would you do if you were a sniper guarding the gateway to Hell and you fell in love with another sniper who was really, super hot?
Scott Derrickson’s new Apple Original movie “The Gorge” answers only one of these questions, and unfortunately for philosophers everywhere, it’s the hot sniper question. But the rest of us will cheerfully make do. “The Gorge” is an unexpectedly romantic movie coming from the “Sinister” and “The Black Phone” director, but it’s also a gnarly monster flick with memorable beasties galore.
Miles Teller stars as Levi, a former Marine sniper who works freelance, and he’s super lonely. When a powerful figure played by Sigourney Weaver enlists Levi for a mysterious, year-long mission, he’s got nothing tying him down. So they drug him, drop him in the middle of an unknown country, and make him hike dozens of kilometers to The Gorge.
The Gorge is, and just stick with me here because I know this will blow your mind… a gorge. It’s a big hole shrouded in mist, with a sniper outpost looming over it. Levi’s mission, as his predecessor tells him, is to make sure nothing comes out. And it’s sure as hell going to try. Levi has automated minigun turrets to help him kill monsters, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of mines, but other than that he’s just supposed to sit there, read poetry and philosophy, and not question why there’s a big-ass hole full of demons in the middle of nowhere that nobody ever talks about.
Levi is all alone on his side of the gorge, but there’s another sniper posted all the way across: Drasa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. She’s a super-duper awesome sniper just like Levi, but unlike Levi she hasn’t been emotionally depleted by their business yet. Levi watches her through his binoculars — and in his defense, Drasa watches him too — and discovers that she’s full of humor and vitality. And since they’re both extremely hot, the sparks fly from afar.
And sometimes so do the bullets, since they still have to stop those monsters from escaping the gorge. Why are there monsters in the gorge? What are the monsters in the gorge? The screenplay by Zach Dean (“The Tomorrow War”) has answers for all the monster-related questions, which is unfortunate because the answers are silly and rob “The Gorge” of much-needed mystique. The Lovecraftian ambiguity of this gateway to Hell, or at least a gateway to Monsterland, was more than enough to excite the imagination and build up palpable dread.
The first half of “The Gorge” is basically an excuse to watch Miles Teller brood, which he is very good at, and Anya Taylor-Joy electrify the screen, which she can do like no other. Taylor-Joy brings vivid physicality and disarming humor to a role that could have been two-dimensionally “badass,” and she brings that same charisma out of her co-star. “The Gorge” is a two-hander, and like all two-handers it relies entirely on the skills of its two hands. In this case, they’re both dextrous and wonderful.
There’s not a lot of plot to “The Gorge” so there’s no sense giving it away, but suffice it to say that the audience will see a lot of monsters and those monsters are memorably freaky. Watching Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy beset by skull spiders is a hoot, even if it does make it look like “The Gorge” is based on a cheesy horror video game. It’s also nice to see the giant fungus from the old live-action “Super Mario Bros.” movie is still getting work these days. Good for it!
“The Gorge” collapses a bit in the second half, when the characters stop developing and start solving simplistic problems and uncovering ridiculous conspiracies. The film also appears to build to a horrifying climax, but that’s not really what Derrickson is going for. This isn’t so much a scary movie as it is an action-packed love story with monsters in it. It’s a very good action-packed love story with monsters in it, but if you were more invested in the demons than the doe-eyes, you may find the conclusion a little simplistic.
In the end, that’s the only real problem with “The Gorge.” It takes the promise of cosmic horror and minimizes it, even though the movie spends about an hour leading the audience in that direction. The plot gets in the way. It’s one thing to have a reason why there are a bunch of monsters in a gorge. It’s another thing to tell the audience that reason and have us roll our eyes. But in the moment, with these two paramilitary paramours, and all these bizarre beasts, it’s a freakily fun time.
“The Gorge” will be released exclusively on Apple TV+ on Feb. 14.