The Gorge

 

Gorgeoumaflip*

The Gorge
Directed by Scott Derrickson
UK/USA 2025
Apple

Warning: All the spoilers.

The Gorge is a new film made specifically for a streaming TV channel… which is not my favourite way to view a new motion picture, for sure.

It stars Miles Teller as Levi, an ex-marine sniper, one of the top five in the world, who takes jobs on a freelance basis but doesn’t really care much for doing anything anymore. But he’s called in by, he assumes, his government to do a job briefed by a higher up, somewhat shady private contractor (played by Sigourney Weaver), after it’s established he has no loved ones or family ties. His job is to spend a year in one of two towers overlooking opposite sides of a gorge in an undisclosed location (which is never revealed but the film was shot in Scotland, I believe).

What he doesn’t know, but given the nature of the questions asked at his mini briefing the audience will surely rumble this five minutes before it happens, is that each previous agent being relieved after their year of guarding the gorge is shot dead and dumped in said valley by their pick up helicopter. And so Levi begins his one year tour of duty, knowing that an agent from ‘another side’ will be guarding the gorge from the opposite tower. Each can see each other through their binoculars but they are forbidden to communicate.

Manning the other tower is Lithuanian sniper assassin Drasa, played by one of my favourite modern actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy… who is even better at her job than Levi, it would seem. And, of course, over the year they bond through writing messages and playing chess etc through their binoculars, slowly falling in love. But they also have to defend themselves and each other when the ‘occupants’ of the valley try to get out of the gorge. And those occupants are pretty terrifying, presenting as kind of half decayed/half regrown vegetable textured soldiers (and horses) left over from the Second World War.

Of course, after a while, Levi finds a way of crossing the valley on a zip line so the two can ‘couple up’ but when he tries to return, he falls into the gorge and, naturally, Drasa parachutes in after him, armed to the teeth.

And in the gorge are what the very first guard in 1941 dubbed, The Hollow Men, named after the T. S. Eliot poem. And then, via a film canister marked up ‘God Forgive Us’ they find that the zombie creatures are fungal resurrections of soldiers resulting from experiments approved by the US, UK and Russian government, collaborating during the war. One which got out of hand when the viral agent used contaminated and engulfed the researchers too. So Levi and Drasa decide that this can’t go on, with private companies still trying to study and create these super soldiers… and so they try to stay alive long enough to destroy the gorge, despite Sigourney Weaver and a few goons arriving in a helicopter to kill them.

And, yeah, it’s a pretty nice film. The special effects work and designs of the undead soldiers and their equally sinister and vegetative environment is apparently based on the paintings of Zdzislaw Beksinski, who I’d not heard of before this but I think I need to check his work out now (he reminds me a little of my favourite artist H. R. Giger). They’re quite terrifying, it has to be said and pose a real, credible threat to the two main protagonists of the film.

So all that’s great and the acting is pretty solid as well which, to be fair, I would expect from those two leads. And things are eerily and propulsively supported by the score from the popular duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross… sadly not available on a proper CD at time of writing. All in all I think it’s a well put together film which would have been much better served by an initial cinema release. I do, however, have two slight criticisms, which I’ll get into now…

Firstly, it could do with some trimming. It’s a long film and I think it would have had much more impact if a few of the lengthy combat scenes towards the end of the picture were whittled down a little more.

Secondly, it’s full of terrible Hollywoodland clichés geared to making it all seem sunny and happy in its outcome. Two things in particular annoyed me. One is getting the human villain helicoptered out to the gorge so she can be brought to violent justice… I really could have done without that, to be honest. And similarly, the seemingly impossible happy ending ripped straight from The Bourne Identity remake is not the most credible, to be honest. I would have had a ‘wake up dreaming that happy ending as a mutated monster on a laboratory table’ kind of rug pull rather than the way it’s left here which, like I said, really does strain credibility.

But there you have it, these things happen and I don’t think they detract too much from a movie which, I’ll say it again, really should have been given a theatrical release rather than being relegated to a barely watched streaming channel. The Gorge is definitely worth a watch if you like sci-fi action thrillers with a dash of romance. Maybe give it a go sometime.

*Okay, that title was meant for one specific person who I know reads this blog. For everyone else, you can take Into The Valley Of Death as an alternate title.