The Gorge (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

You may find familiar, dear reader, my praise of films that know and demonstrate exactly what they are, regardless of budget, marketing, and online chatter. A B-movie that is, enthusiastically, the kind of simpler, cheaper, wackier thing you expect to see in an encore feature at a drive-in or underground film festival will earn extra points for me purely as a result of this self-awareness (not metafiction, mind you, but pure comfort in its clearly defined subgenre or intended audience) and resulting conviction. Think genre films. Think zany action. Think excuses for flair. These are films you don't have to take notes during -- heck, you probably don't even need subtitles, because the dialogue isn't that important -- and can sit back and fully enjoy. Or not, and you can snack and chitchat with your friends while it plays before you. 

This is what Scott Derrickson, notably religious creator of thoughtful and haunting horrors The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Sinister, has released to us this year. I'm a big fan of Derrickson's work and the way he has articulated his faith in relation to his preferred genre, and I've been glad for his continued rise in prominence and studio structures. Though nothing he's directed has felt as poignant or personally affecting as those two titles already mentioned -- the former remaining the single best meditation on the intersection of faith and horror I've ever seen and the latter being the single scariest viewing experience I've ever had in a cinema -- the director of Deliver Us from Evil, Doctor Strange, and The Black Phone seems to enjoy playing with big budgets and effects-laden visuals in recent years. The admittedly diminishing returns show no sign of running out with The Gorge.

Sadly, though, this film was not released in cinemas, and I simply cannot understand why. Unless you're at home with a sizable tv screen and at least decent surround sound, The Gorge cannot glean from you the awe it was clearly intended to harvest. 

In brief, the plot concerns two mercenary snipers stationed in isolation at two towers opposite a gorge, which they must maintain lest the dangerous creatures below emerge. That's it, and I tell you that because as such, this is a fabulously high-concept film. Compare it to '70s disaster films or major summer blockbusters: you can get a lot of mileage out of Kevin Bacon fighting carnivorous giant worms in the desert. And regardless of the quality of its special effects, there is something charming about simply watching the compelling conceit unfurl; it helps the film's legacy when major stars populate the screen and special effects are convincing and/or funny. 

And while Derrickson and his screenwriter Zach Dean clearly have fun plumbing the depths of their titular gorge and its secrets, one does grow a little suspicious of their own investment in the film. Because for all its wacky energy and bizarre plot turns -- and trust and believe, these are aplenty -- the film takes itself just -- just -- too seriously. Needless details are one thing, but when their sole purpose is to elicit sympathy from the viewer and intensify emotional attachment, we trespass into sentimentality. We don't need to know that Miles Teller has PTSD from the military or that Anya Taylor-Joy's terminally ill father is soon to commit suicide; these are masterful performers with enough charisma to lead larger projects than this, so let them just do it. Edit out the sentimental crap and turn this movie into what it should be: a mostly silent, curious and introspective, white-knuckled ride through hell and back.

That's not to say the romance aspect of this thriller/adventure/sci-fi/horror film is unwelcome. Despite its truncated length, the budding relationship between the two characters feels both blissful and earned, thanks to a montage sequence for the ages. By the time he hatches a plan to visit her, we're fully on board with this, though frankly she was so rude to him at first I was yelling at the screen for him to go back. The problem is rather that the film leans too heavily into this at times, and too heavily into the action and mystery and horror at others, with no clear tonal through line or even recognizable pattern. Worse, and this is perhaps a little mean, but Dean's dialogue needed some serious workshopping to sound believable and to save my poor eyes from rolling.

After you see the film, I dare to just think about the exact same story but shot entirely from Miles's perspective. Or Anya's. Think about us, stuck there silently with one character as they have to learn their job, settle into place, discover each other, try to communicate and build a relationship, and decide to make the dangerous and disobedient visit. That approach would ratchet up the tension and mystery even more by obscuring certainty about the beguiling other person, shed the artificial sentimentality of being force-fed their backstories, add opportunities for creative cinematography, editing, and sound mixing around one person's isolated existence, and provide space for unexpected and earned comedy as we would understand the awkwardness of being alone and needing to connect with another character even from afar, if only to learn what the heck the movie was about! We'd discover things along with the characters in a much more compelling and authentic way, without too many details from the screenplay being lost along the way.

And I think that's where we'll leave this review. Several things yet I wanted to mention -- including the amazing score from Reznor and Ross that electrifies this film's energy, Sigourney Weaver's delicious appearance from head to toe, effective and scary monster design (a mix of Annihilation and The Mist), Sope Dirisu's considerable skill in enlivening a miserable exposition-dumper minor part before being totally wasted by the film, the absolute nonsense that these lovers need binoculars to even see each other yet often smile and wave without so much as a squint, the insane color grading of the fog scenes (gray to yellow to blue to red, for no apparent reason) that had me in a panic attack because I hadn't taken anything so why was I tripping -- but describing too many details of a movie like this can really take the joy away from your raw viewing of it. So if any of this sounds remotely interesting to you, or you want to just have a fun time with a fine flick, check out The Gorge. It's a solid date night choice.