Title – The Gorge (2025)
Director – Scott Derrickson (Sinister)
Cast – Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu
Plot – Elite snipers Levi (Teller) and Drasa (Taylor-Joy) are tasked with keeping watch over a mysterious gorge that holds a dark secret. As the months draw on, the two are drawn too each other despite the rules of their engagement stating they are not to make contact.
“We’re here to protect their secrets”
Review by Eddie on 14/03/2025
The biggest film launch yet as an Apple TV original, drawing in impressive viewership numbers and new subscribers to the premium subscription service, Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge offers watchers a chance to witness a high concept genre hybrid try its best to juggle its various elements while becoming a watchable if disappointing overall experience.
Afforded a significant budget rumoured to be over $70 million, screenwriter Zach Dean and Derrickson have done well managing to secure that amount of funding and security from Apple for what is essential one giant B-movie in disguise, built around the concept of elite snipers falling in love while they watch over the titular gorge that in layman’s terms “guards the gates of hell” to ensure that the mysterious nasties at the heart of the crevasse don’t escape and wreck havoc on the wider world.
What exactly lays at the heart of this core concept is best left to be discovered by viewers as they go but its clear the zany idea wasn’t really what drove Derrickson and Dean along as they conceptualised this project that is more romance than straight up horror/thriller as Miles Teller’s Levi and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Drasa begin to fall for each other despite the fact they are separated by a giant hole in the ground, each guarding a side of the gorge as they are stationed in remote sniper watch towers.
Both talented performers and likable presences, Teller and Taylor-Joy do some heavy lifting to try and ensure this not always balanced experience keeps its head above water but its hard not to feel like while allotting so much screen time to the romantic angle, Derrickson has failed to maximise the potential of the story idea at his disposal and for anyone heading into this one expecting a true horror experience or unnerving thriller like Derrickson has given us before with the likes of Sinister or The Black Phone, they are going to be bitterly let-down by an end product that arguably isn’t what the doctor ordered from this concept.
It’s not to say things don’t get pretty out there through the films two hour plus running time, whether its Levi and Drasa manning mounted guns to mow down climbing nasties, World War 2 battalions living their lives like land versions of Barbosa’s crewmates from Pirates of the Caribbean or rabbit pie dinner dates, The Gorge is happy to get weird and over the top, you just wish that it had committed itself more to the wildness of its idea rather than giving us far too much generic romance than we needed with the gates of hell ready to be opened for our viewing pleasure.
Final Say –
There’s fun to be had from this successful Apple-TV original thanks to its crazy core concept and the work of its two talented leads but you can’t help but feel as though The Gorge could have been a new B-movie cult favourite that relished in its kookiness rather than its generic elements.
2 1/2 Ramone vinyl’s out of 5
Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys) 
I enjoyed this movie. The best scene was where Levi’s predecessor is hanging on the rope off the helicopter giving his credentials. He thinks he’s going home but no. Bang. That gives the game up at the very beginning. The working class is disposable. They will use us up then throw us away like Trash. Levi and Drasa are told not to communicate with each other. It’s common in the corporate world but it’s a scam. Whatever you do you’re still their corporate slave. So why not reach across the Gorge and make friends. The Gorge is the social isolation capitalism scams us into imposing on ourself. Levi and Drasa rebel so they survive. The monsters in the Gorge aren’t monsters. They’re the souls of dead proletarians condemned to a living death by their corporate masters.
Glad you enjoyed it on this type of level mate. I had some fun with it but overall not sure it did the best with the idea at its disposal.
E
Do you have any theories about why they made Drasa a Lithuanian and not Russian? Did they not want to risk being attacked in the current political climate?
You might be onto something there!
E
I’m an American of Lithuanian descent. As flattered as I was to see a sexy Argentinian babe like Ms. Taylor Joy represent one of my people, I had to wonder. Her father is a KGB agent. Lithuania is a very small, very Russophobic country