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.

Doctor Strange

Benedict In Monks

Doctor Strange
2016 USA  Directed by Scott Derrickson
UK cinema release print.

Doctor Strange is one of those comic book characters who I loved as a kid and I got quite excited when I’d heard Johnny Depp was in consideration for the role. I wasn’t too disappointed when he exited the scene because, frankly, Benedict Cumberbatch is one of those actors who you know will do a great job with any material he’s given and I could see how the arrogance his Sherlock character projected would be something which could really help bring the pre-magical version of Dr. Stephen V. Strange to life (the V stands for Vincent and that was who the original look of the character in those early 1960s appearances in Strange Tales, which I loved so much in reprint form, was based on... Vincent Price).

Now, I used to love these comics because Doctor Strange could jump out of his physical body and do battle on the astral planes, while somebody was hanging around and guarding his physical form so it was kept safe from harm. As a young 7 or 8 year old, of course, I was all about things like astral projection and ‘out of the body’ experiences so, when you had a Marvel superhero who could do all that stuff, it was a treat.

I went to the cinema on the first night of release in the UK, which was unusual enough in that it was a Tuesday, because I just couldn’t wait to see how this character fits into and pushes the boundaries of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the answer, on both those counts, was... well, actually pretty well. Scott Derrickson, who directed this wonderful movie, has actually treated the material with the respect it deserves and you get a real feeling of those early short strips co-created by Stan Lee and, as importantly (perhaps more so), original Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko, who helped write and then drew the strips. They were pretty much a guide to the psychedelic world of the spirit in its hippiest, trippiest form but, a good few years before all that wave of counter culture hit (I’d personally say that certain sequences in Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle of movies also foresaw and possibly ‘usher’ed in the birth of psychedelia... possibly as influenced by the colour work that Mario Bava brought to the cinema and which the people at AIP studios at the time were more than aware of).

The movie really does those early 1963 and 1964 tales justice and the origin is pretty much the same as the one depicted in the comics, although I believe The Ancient One was originally based in the Himalayas and, either way, he was most certainly an old man...not Tilda Swinton, who plays the role in the film. And that’s not a dig by the way... the casting of the always brilliant Tilda is a really shrewd one, especially since the wonderful Rachel McAdams plays the only other female character in this movie and she’s pretty much wasted in how little screen time she has for the majority of the story. We also have the amazing Chiwetel Ejiofor, a villainous Mads Mikkelsen and a very funny Benedict Wong in the cast. Along with Cumberbatch, absolutely nailing Strange as you would expect from him, they have a really great ensemble group of actors here... at least two or three of whom will definitely need to come back for further Marvel movies.

I do have a few disappointments in the film but they are really minor. I’ll just get them out of the way now.

Okay... so somewhere in The Avengers (aka Marvel’s Avengers Assemble and reviewed here), I’m pretty sure Doctor Strange is mentioned in the helicarrier (also in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, reviewed here... but that’s a different issue). Now the Stark Tower wasn’t rebuilt as The Avengers Tower until after the events that took place in that movie so... how can a ‘pre-heroed up’ version of the character be looking out on a New York skyline that includes The Avenger’s Tower? Surely the timeline here doesn’t make sense and is a bit of a... well, a huge continuity error? I may be wrong but that kind of hit me between the eyes when I was looking at this movie in cinemas.

The other thing is that the tone of the story seems a bit... hmmm... somehow a bit too ‘even’. The magical battles are really something special in that they’ve done it all superbly... well okay, the astral plane versions of the characters aren't totally white ghosts like they were in the comics but what they’ve done here gets the message across pretty well and probably appears a lot more acceptable on screen than taking the look straight from the page, is my guess. However, there doesn’t seem to be much contrast within the scenes... with the last third of the movie being a few battles at different locations following on in quick succession without any real contrast in the sequences. I felt it needed just a little more ‘oomph and rest’ between set pieces to give you time to breathe and pace things a little more... thus enhancing the action sequences when they come...  but that didn’t quite get that feel here so it almost threatens to become somewhat less than the sum of its parts on occasion.

A third thing is problematic purely because I knew the early comics. There’s a character in here and, as soon as I heard his name, I knew where the story arc was going to be taking him... I won’t reveal the character name here because if you know the comics you’ll know it already... and I don’t want to put in any spoilers here. I didn’t know if they were going to be saving a certain ‘turning point’ for that character for a later movie or maybe they were going to go the full Green Lantern movie route and have that character do his thing in an epilogue scene. Well, this movie has two post-movie scenes, as do a lot of MCU movies these days. One superb one in the middle of the credits with exactly the Marvel character I had suspected would turn up making an appearance and gluing it together with one of next year’s MCU movies... and a post credits scene where the character I mentioned before gets to live up to the character as portrayed in the comics. So, yeah, they went the full Green Lantern on this one... which is fine by me because I’m one of the few people who actually loved the Green Lantern movie and I believe the plot and structure of the new Doctor Strange movie shares a lot of DNA with it, actually. Anyway, my problem was that I knew something pretty basic about a certain character who is in the movie way before it happened and so... maybe that wasn’t the wisest move. Then again, there are probably a significantly less number of people who used to read Doctor Strange than most of the other Marvel comics so... it’s not such a big deal, I guess.

Everything else about the movie works really well. The acting, the look and design, the spectacular special effects are all absolutely brilliant... and the dialogue in this one is really great too. There’s definitely a lot of fun and humour about this movie and it’s certainly a sharp relief from the previous MCU movie, Captain America - Civil War (reviewed by me here). Another great thing about it is the music...

Now, I’m gutted that Brian Tyler didn’t get a chance to work on this because I like how he’s slowly been bringing the musical elements of the Marvel cinematic universe into some kind of coherent style (something the company seriously needs) but now they’ve pulled in Michael Giacchino on scoring duties. Now I quite like Giacchino anyway (although I don’t like his opening, Marvel company fanfare as much as Tyler’s) and he turns in a really great score here. Definitely loved the sitars used in the end titles and it all works really well with the movie. Cant wait to get the CD of this one... it’ll be on for quite a few spins, I can tell you.

This movie has all the usual tie ups that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is known for and I’m sure Doctor Strange will be playing a special role in the proceedings in the third of The Avengers films. There’s a special artefact he always had in the comics, apart from the famous red cloak (blue in those original stories... if memory serves me... it didn’t change to red until later) and I’m sure anyone familiar with the artefact I’m talking about from the strips will realise exactly how this factors in with some of the last few years’ Marvel movies... so I won’t say anything more on that subject here because one of the characters, Wong, makes the connection quite implicit by the end of the film. So, basically, if you’re trying to watch all the specific Marvel movies which link into each other at the cinema... definitely don’t miss this one.

And, really, you don’t want to miss Doctor Strange anyway. It’s a terrific, fun movie and, although it injects a certain gravitas into some of the subject matter, it’s a welcome antidote to some of those solemn, darker super hero movies which have been doing the rounds at the cinema lately... juggling a dark, frightening tone with a light, frothy window dressing. Great stuff and easily the best of the superhero movies I’ve seen this year. Watch it while it’s hot!

Deliver Us From Evil

Performance Evil-uation

Deliver Us From Evil
2014 USA
Directed by Scott Derrickson
UK Cinema release print.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Scott Derrickson as a director. On the one hand he directed Sinister (reviewed here), which is not a film I had a great deal of good things to say about, although I did try and defend certain aspects of it as well as I could, considering some of the negative points I mentioned in that review. However, you’ve also got to remember that this is the same director who gave us, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, one of the better of the “exorcism” films made in recent years. A very well made piece of horror/courtroom cinema, if you ever get the chance to take a look at it.

I had no preconceptions about Deliver Us From Evil going in. I can’t remember if I’d seen a trailer for it or not, it could be any of a number of horror movie trailers doing the rounds in the last couple of months, but I figured I would go and take a look at it because it didn’t look like it was a remake of anything and so it scored points with me straight away on that count.

The film is based on the true life account of a cop, Ralph Sarchie, who is played by Eric Bana in the movie and it details his encounters with supernatural forces dealing with demonic possession. He is at the start of the movie, of course, cynical of such things himself but when the things he sees and encounters as a cop on the beat become less and less explainable, he “teams up”, so to speak, with a priest, Mendoza, played by Édgar Ramírez, who is able to guide him and help him in a series of connected cases which involve demonic possession and which ultimately lead straight back to Sarchie and his family. Sarchie’s “radar” at finding troubling incidents on the beat is revealed as a possible “gift” of the supernatural... but it also acts like a magnet to demonic entities who are attracted to this talent.

The film starts off pretty strong, with an opening sequence which takes place in Iraq and which is relevant to pretty much all the events that happen later in the movie. I’m happy to say it keeps up the pacing and is an interesting movie throughout. Now how successful it is depends on your definition of what you look for in a good movie as opposed to a good horror movie. Let me explain that a little...

You’ve got two very strong male leads, A list stars, with Eric Bana and Édgar Ramírez and they’re not really actors you would associate with the horror genre. They both do an excellent job in this, as do all the supporting cast and, although there’s a hell of a lot of hand held shaky camera throughout the film, it actually in some ways feels like a 1970s movie and, frankly, that’s a strength. Yes, I know it’s actually set in 2013 but what I mean to say is the acting style and delivery of the lines feels like something made in Hollywood back when great American movies were being made and this is a pretty good compliment to pay to any movie in my book.

However... the flip side of that is that, although the film does maintain a certain amount of tension and suspense throughout the picture, I wouldn’t actually call this a scary movie... so in regards to certain ingredients of this kind of entertainment I would say it downplays one of the elements somewhat. But this is not a bad thing either.... some of the classic horror films of all time, such as Bride Of Frankenstein or Creature From The Black Lagoon are not , in actual fact, scary and so this shouldn’t necessarily be the barometer by which you judge this movie, in all honesty. Part of that, I think, is to do with the way the camera cuts to different points of view in various sequences... the ones which are trying to be scary... when it maybe needed to stick to something resembling point of view in those moments.

However, although it may not be a scary film it is, certainly, a pretty great one and I, like all people, truly appreciate a well made movie. I think this movie is one of the ones I would like to nominate as one of my “comfort horror movies”... that is to say, horror films you can relax with and have on when you want to do some thinking with a little bit of distraction coming from the screen. It is something I would like to watch again on a number of occasions and I’ll certainly be grabbing the blu ray of it when it comes down in the sales.

Of course, I may be a bit harsh in regards to the amount of scares and sustainable tension packed within the film... which felt a little more like a police procedural movie at times (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Different things scare different people and you really can’t go that wrong when you’ve got one of the great modern composers, Christopher Young, turning in one of his trademark horror scores. So the best, sure fire way to find out if this is your kind of horror movie is, of course, to go see it for yourself. I’ve certainly got no doubts about recommending it to anyone because it’s a well made, entertaining piece of cinema which should hold your interest throughout. Whether you happen to find it scary or not is just an extra cherry on an already tasty cake. Miss this one at your peril.

Sinister

Yes, Sinister

Sinister 2012 UK 
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: Sinister spoilers lurking at the edges of the frame.

You know, horror movies can be a lot like a conjuring trick.

I’ve touched on this before in my recent review of The Possession (here) but I think  it’s worth exploring again now because Sinister has some of the same problems which that picture had.

I think it would be true to say that a lot of contemporary horror movies tend to rely on a creepy atmosphere conveyed by lurking and wandering in dark places, usually alone and with the (attempted) surprise/shock tactic of having the source of the on-screen protagonist’s terror suddenly coming to light within the frame... often accompanied by a visceral musical stinger. But it’s all very much a matter of sleight of hand. Most people know when the shock jump is going to happen because, as I’ve said before, the rules of the horror film are really easy to pick up on. You know the first expected shock is just, in almost all cases still, a red herring. Like a cat jumping out or, in this particular movie’s case, a scorpion at one point and a snake at another. It’s not until the creepy music starts to calm down or, as in this film at one point, stops altogether, that the real shock jump is going to come.

I watched this movie because I believe in Ethan Hawke as an actor. He’s a talented guy who you know you’re always going to believe. He even makes the half-witted-to-even-attempt-it ‘reimagining’ of John Carpenter’s classic Assault On Precinct 13 look good. He’s someone I can trust to sell any concept to me and so, when I saw he was making a horror movie, I figured I was in for a really scary time because if Hawke looks like he believes what’s going, I’m probably going to buy into it too.

And it’s true. His acting is superb here, as always, and I can say that the tension is solidly ratcheted up to 11 all the way through this one... well, okay, most of the way through. Even so, I was still quite distracted by a lot of stuff in this movie where I could sadly see ‘the conjurer’s hands’, so to speak, right in the foreground of the viewing experience. Which is a shame because I really liked another horror movie put together by the same director a few years back... The Exorcism Of Emily Rose.

Ok... so here are my slight problems with this movie, in no particular order.

First up is... Ethan never turns on the lights. Even when he’s working he just has little side lights on. The house is mostly plunged in darkness (that’s okay, his family are asleep when he’s working in his room at nights) but, even so, his room is portrayed in a constant state of darkness, and with the amount of aprehension he exhibits because of the unusual situation he finds himself in, there’s no way somebody would go and explore the things he does alone, let alone not turn the lights on while he’s doing it. Being in the dark is fine... you need that for a good horror movie to work... but these days audiences need a reason and when there are constant light sources around, people are going to start feeling that the characters on screen are just a little silly in the head.

Secondly, the film starts off being a serial killer film, but then turns supernatural half way through. This is fine but the ritualised trappings of the supernatural mystery at the heart of this are fairly easy to unravel. When Ethan’s young son starts doing some scary sleepwalking stuff, you will already have figured out he’s just a red herring to divert everyone’s gaze away from where the real danger lays. This makes the ending, which is the weakest thing about this movie, a little obvious and, when you do assume they’re going to do something really clever at the end... and then don’t... you might find yourself very disappointed at the culmination of all the events at this movie’s denouement. I know I did.

Thirdly, the films hook to the supernatural starts when the main protagonist finds a box of Super 8 films in the attic of the “previous crime scene” home he moves into. To lend dramatic weight to the proceedings, Ethan looks at each new film at a suitable interval apart so that each murder can be slowly revealed to the audience at a time when it lends more frightening gravitas to the movie as a whole. To which I say... absolute rubbish! There’s no way a person is going to wait what is effectively a day or two before watching each five minute movie and go about his day to day in the meantime. Seriously, anyone with half a brain, especially when finding themselves in the same situation that this guy does, would gobble all those movies down in one hit... just to preserve their own sanity, if nothing else.

So yeah. There’s some really weak stuff in this movie and it did kind of wreck a lot of it for me, to be honest. Once you have the ground rules established for the mystery surrounding the murders, you’ll realise straight away that the main protagonist’s escape route is actually a bee line for his own peril. Frankly, though, you might be so distracted by the fact that the main protagonist has missed the obvious next link of the puzzle himself (especially when he practically says it out loud earlier on in the movie) that you might be stunned enough by this that you’ll forget what’s going to happen next. Unlikely though, to be honest.

But... having said all that, the film is shot with enough taste that the scary parts do tend to have a long, drawn out sense of suspenseful tension to them and some sequences where some dead kids are running around the house in slow motion, playing cat and mouse and always keeping just out of the main protagonists eyeline, are quite eerie and well done. There’s a certain sense of surrealistic lethargy to them which makes for a really special few minutes of movie watching.

The music is interesting too. Composed by Christopher Young, a modern master of thriller and horror scores (amongst other genres) who really doesn’t get enough high profile work, this score defies what I expected from this composer and goes into a sensory, electronically tinged realm which is closer in some ways to the early works of John Carpenter than it is to Young’s regular style. At least, judging from the scores I have of his. He also provides some interesting musical texture to each of the silent Super 8 films, by lending them a touch of otherworldliness which is completely unique to each clip we are shown, with reference to either the date of when each film was supposed to have been shot, or with deference to the theme of each gruesome killing. It’s still a very subtle score, that much I would expect from this particular composer... but like I said, it’s certainly very different to anything else I’ve personally heard him do. It’s effective enough in the film, of course, and that’s what counts. Can’t wait for my first decontextualised listen of this one.

And that’s about all I’ve got for you on this movie, I’m afraid.

So... Sinister. Scary but dumb. Interesting hook/premise which lets itself down somewhat throughout the course of the movie. Well acted with some eerie atmospheres and excellent musical support but ultimately something I probably wouldn’t watch again, although I’m glad I’ve seen it the once because I suspect it’s something people may look back to in the future. Ideal for teenagers who are just getting into horror movies. An interesting but less satisfying cinematic meal, perhaps, for more seasoned genre fans.