Apple TV’s newest original, The Gorge, directed by Scott Derrickson, is a financial success, and audiences across the world made this film the service’s biggest premiere yet. With the beloved Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller playing blooming lovers in a dystopic science-fiction tale, how could this film fail?
Ex-military operative Levi Kane (Teller) leaves on a top-secret mission to guard a gorge, an endless pit with incomprehensible horrors. Likewise, Russian operative Drasa (Taylor-Joy) finds herself on the opposite side of the gorge. The two must never come in contact during their one-year mission and are separated by an east and west tower across the pit on a cliff. When Kane is debriefed on his mission by the previous guard, J.D. (Sope Dirisu), he’s told that a battalion of soldiers once went down there and never came back. The message is clear: whatever you do, don’t go in the gorge. After J.D. leaves his post, he is then gunned down by one of his employer’s goons in a helicopter, and his body falls down into a stretch of forestry. The job is essentially like being on death row, locked away in a tower with all your belongings, only to die at the end of your sentence.
Following their assignment, Drasa quickly breaks the no-communication rule on her birthday, where they begin to communicate via written signs. The inside of their towers more so resembles an apartment—homely and quaint. It’s kind of baffling how objects seem to materialize out of nowhere, though. Some (okay, most) of the script choices are questionable “look how impressive this is” moments. For instance, Kane somehow acquires and plays on a drum set in his quarters. Such inconsistencies are no surprise given Zach Dean’s written work on previous films such as Fast X and The Tomorrow War—not known for their narrative merit. Trickled in are many B-film moments that somehow made their way onto a blockbuster that went straight to streaming.
The relationship between Drasa and Kane is one that many will warm up to. The two are a charming pair who quickly fall in love amidst the apocalyptic circumstances that surround them. While their budding romance is one aspect of the film that succeeds, the science-fiction film The Gorge wants to be is an underwhelming afterthought. After a series of unfortunate circumstances, they find themselves in the gorge together, surrounded by “The Hollow Men,” because every hell needs its demons. This pit of catastrophe is a cheap appropriation of Stranger Things’ “Upside Down.” It’s all downhill from here.
Their elusive employer, Bartholomew (Sigourney Weaver), makes brief appearances throughout the film, all behind her desk in front of a green screen city background. The script contains her in an ineffectual overseeing role, doing nothing but ordering people around to do her job until she’s forced to intervene. While, yes, Drasa and Kane are the story, it would’ve been fair to portray other characters beyond genre conventions. The Gorge is barely watchable after the halfway point—just get it over with.
The Gorge offers little excitement and a lot of disappointment. Failing in that, the filmmaker and writer refused to take risks. Whatever the original script was that hit the Blacklist in 2020, it had to have been better than what made it on screen. Taylor-Joy and Teller may have charmed me to the end of the runtime, but this forgettable disarray of a film should leave your watchlist.
2/5 Stars