Two highly trained operatives grow close from a distance after being sent to guard opposite sides of a mysterious gorge. When an evil below emerges, they must work together to survive what lies wit...
“The Gorge” passes on being vaguely interesting both in its concept and presentation but in terms of execution, it avoids completely zip lining into the pitfalls of depravity despite not immediately nullifying its own efforts.
Am I the only one who felt like Scott Derrickson felt a little adrift here? He’s done plenty of trippy, horror-filled, action centric stuff in the past and this is him playing in dangerous territory, shifting away from and back to more obvious conventions without much rhythm. Despite being cognizant of this genre cocktail, this was a sign he had the confidence but not the vision.
The best terms that come to mind in regards to the production design are cold and desolate. While a good chunk of these sets look ripped straight out of Annihilation or The Last of Us, it does play on the different stages and shadings of pandemic isolation with a dreary post-COVID, post Cold War atmosphere that supplies the necessary scope for a project of this magnitude with not much scale. Everything’s rather easy on the eyes but it doesn’t make the visual aesthetic any less…..grating and synthetic to look at, given that Apple TV flavor is its own unique brand of dishwater.
Lighting often switches through high-contrast colored backlighting that recalls Dario Argento’s Suspiria but only more mildly irritating. Dan Lausten’s sweeping picturesque quality to his cinematography is the movie’s overwhelmingly positive factor with the editing coming in as a close second despite some blurring fast edits, costumes aren’t all that remarkable and what’s usually an uneven cocktail of horror, action, sci-fi, romance and a political thriller often gets very muddled at times as one genre sticks out like a sore thumb compared to others…..but the efforts are still somewhat commendable especially with a durable pace. You don’t hand a project with these many jumbled pieces to Scott Derrickson if you don’t think he can juggle it with some gusto.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score is less hypnotizing or entrancing than how it was utilized in Challengers but the music still fits despite being heavily indistinctive, CGI is progressively middling and the action sequences are frankly off putting, partially due to how basic they devolve into but mostly because of the hackneyed staging of them.
Nothing against Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy; they do well at mostly playing against type despite their chemistry falling between spotty and decent from moment to moment but the “romance” between them is….kinda tepid and flaccid at once. And this is more a case of the writer overstepping and overestimating how much we’re invested in these two when there’s very little interesting about said characters, especially when the dialogues this on-the-nose.
It is nice seeing their characters bond, at least.
Speaking of overestimating how much we care, I can’t say the narrative has many trump cards in its back pocket beyond the rather predictable outlines we’re all used to….and a truly dumb thoroughline with an elongated set-up, questionable structure and downright unsatisfying denouement. Considering the plot is basically that final battle in Back 4 Blood against the Abomination and the Ridden, or to be more charitable, Sleepless in Seattle crossbred with Serenity and Stranger Things stretched out to meet the Valentines Day quota, it’s a jack-of-all-trades that trades its possibly deep psychological character studies for an FPS computer game shoot-em-up. In a lame man’s terms, it’s yet another film that can’t decide what it wants to be or where to go and that’s a common occurrence with Zach Dean as a writer.
Moreso, it’s a clear sign of both a director and writers creative visions clashing.
Admittedly, it does a better job catching your attention in the first half when the intrigue and tension are high and you’re curious about the two leads and the initial promise of the Gorge only for all that progress to dissipate when we actually get in the Gorge. The two hour structure thankfully gives enough time to barely juggle all its ideas of purpose, distrust of higher authority, the dogmas of religion and the materialism of science; each various plot thread takes their time resolving themselves but only the romance gets a proper conclusion and for an “original feature” unsubtly selling itself on how dumb and schlocky its entire premise is, the tone ends up becoming the major buzzkill, derailing the rest of the project.
We’re talking about two very skilled yet traumatized war veterans from different countries forced to guard a seemingly bottomless abyss to prevent monsters from coming out while falling for each other to escape their object loneliness so yes, you’d expect the tone to play into all that baggage but it cant modulate that accordingly because the audiences suspension of disbelief just keeps widening with each passing minute. Why are there are only two people positioned to over an entire gorge, why are they stationed directly across from one another and how has nobody else been made aware of this?
Such conventional means are not all in vain for this movie, as The Gorge’s lopsided tonal shifts and congested narrative tendrils alongside really solid technical features places it miles above most Netflix projects but still leaves you with a slight metallic aftertaste.
