The premise is at least intriguing. The Gorge stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy as two highly regarded snipers who are tasked with a mystery project. The titular gorge exists in an unnamed country, and each year, new soldiers, ones who have no attachments or life outside of their military careers, are recruited to spend 365 days doing… well, they don’t know at first.
The gorge is gigantic and filled with fog, and on either side, there are two watch towers, managed in secret by various governments. Eventually, Drasa (Taylor-Joy) and Levi (Teller) learn that their job is to keep whatever is in the gorge from getting out. They’re sort of like military maintenance workers, spending their days checking the miles of barbed wire fence, automatic turrets, and other tools designed to prevent anything from escaping. The two are also expected — and largely forced — to live isolated lives. The gorge and its various protections make it nearly impossible to travel between the watch towers, and communication between the two is strictly forbidden.
Naturally, loneliness pushes them to start talking anyways, using high-tech binoculars to share written messages back-and-forth. The Gorge is a movie of two halves. The first plays out almost like a rom-com, with Drasa and Levi playfully discovering each other through music and chess and potato vodka. It’s kind of cute, and also kind of infuriating, because they somehow show almost no interest in the massive mystery right in front of them, even after a close call in which they catch a glimpse of the horrors within.
The second half starts out promising, when an obviously stupid decision forces the pair into the mystery. There’s some neat visual design inside of the gorge; it’s a bit like the Upside Down from Stranger Things crossed with a particularly metal Doom level. At one point, the pair fight giant spiders made of skulls. But aside from a few cool creatures, it’s also extremely derivative, not only pulling from Stranger Things and Doom but also Annihilation and Pirates of the Caribbean.
That initial promise gives way to something silly, predictable, and not even a little bit fun. Even worse, the two-hour runtime feels extremely padded. There’s a dramatic — and admittedly pretty inventive — escape sequence that would’ve been a cool place to go out on. But instead, it just leads to a whole other act where nothing interesting happens. The ridiculous final twist of what the gorge is makes for prime B-movie material, and even takes some half-hearted stabs at the military-industrial complex, but it all gets lost in an otherwise drab action flick.
Bad streaming movies aren’t a new phenomenon, but The Gorge feels particularly disappointing as Apple shapes itself into a destination for science fiction. It’s an out-of-place, bland movie sitting next to adored thrillers like Severance, and it shows that even streaming services intent on chasing awards and prestige can’t seem to get away from derivative slop.
The Gorge starts streaming on Apple TV Plus on February 14th.
