The Gorge follows Levi (Miles Teller) who takes up a shady mercenary position alongside The Gorge, a massive ravine full of mysterious and unknown creatures. Opposite his tower on the other side is Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy), a Russian operative who is also stationed there for unknown reasons. Despite being forbidden to contact the other side, they begin a slow-moving friendship that will lead them to unlock the secrets of the Gorge.
I want to be honest going in that I had very low expectations for this movie. I saw the trailer and thought it looked like a straight-to-streaming dumb action movie. Well, as it turns out, I was wrong … because it was much worse than that.
The Characters
Levi is barely a character. Before his mission to the Gorge, we see him wake up, leave his nondescript house, and pet a dog that isn’t even his. We later learn he has no family, no girlfriend, and drinks three ounces of alcohol to go to sleep to prevent the bad PTSD dreams. That’s it. Other than a shoe-horned-in poetry hobby, we never learn anything about this guy. He’s a wet paper towel of a man with zero charisma.
Drasa is another story. Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance brings some much-needed life to the scenes between the two. She’s headstrong, funny, and clever. The issue is that she’s not the main character, and the chemistry between the two of them is just non-existent. I know Miles Teller can act so it’s genuinely frustrating to watch his monotone throughout the movie’s over two-hour run time.
None of the other characters are even worth mentioning. They’re cardboard cut-outs delivering lines so the movie can happen. Very sad that one of them is Sigourney Weaver, who is too good for this slop.
The Setting
I won’t lie that I expected to hate the setting, but the Gorge itself is pretty cool. The design of the creatures and the actual Gorge on the ground is haunting, with shifting colors between layers of fog and human skeletons twisted as trees and flora grew around them. Some of the practical effects used for the creatures look downright terrifying, particularly the translucent deep-breathing forms stretched thin in the bunker space like webbing across the chasms. That being said, the CGI creatures look particularly bad up close and I wish they’d kept the practical effects for all of the creature’s more intimate scenes.
The setting in and around the Gorge is typical dystopian sci-fi, nothing bad but nothing particularly interesting. The timeline is a bit uncanny with the numerous mentions of soviet leadership and the fact that Drasa is from Lithuania and works for Russia. This is definitely a nitpick, but I found myself asking the question “Did the Gorge prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union?” Maybe, but like many questions the movie poses, we never really find out what happened.
The Story
I’m honestly kind of mad at how insufferable the story is. The plotline is basically Thing A happens, then Thing B, then Thing C, and then we’re done. The folks on the Canon Podcast (you can listen to it here) recently discussed how this form of story-telling is a recipe for disaster, since a good story needs cause and effect (i.e. Thing A happened because Thing B). The Gorge showcases this writing style and shows exactly why it doesn’t work: because it’s boring to watch.
The exposition is either non-existent or so heavy-handed that I found myself laughing. The entire first half of the movie is dedicated to Levi and Drasa’s budding romance before we even get to anything gorge-related. Once we do, the pacing is a nightmare because the writers realize we have only an hour to wrap up the entire sci-fi B-plot and they haven’t bothered to establish anything yet.
I saw a comment on Instagram saying this movie would be much better as a video game, and I completely agree. All of the ham-fisted dialogue and plot contrivances could be forgiven if this was a Resident Evil or Silent Hill-style game where we get to learn about the world through exploration. It would also make all the scenes where Levi awkwardly picks something up and states out loud what it is make some degree of sense. As a movie though, it just comes across like the writer thinks his audience has no comprehension skills and must be reminded at every moment what’s happening and what we’re looking at.
Conclusion
The Gorge is a bad movie, and not even a turn-your-brain-off fun action movie kind of bad. It’s a why-was-this-made bad. While the movie has potential in its setting, it squanders any goodwill with bad writing and an awful main character.
While watching The Gorge, I was reminded of Alex Garland’s Annihilation since the Gorge possesses very similar qualities to the Shimmer in that movie. Unlike the Gorge though, Annihilation knows what it’s trying to do and has something to say about its characters in relation to this sci-fi unknown world. By contrast, Levi and Drasa are simply there, wandering around until the plot needs them to do something.
In short, go watch Annihilation instead. I wasted two hours of my long weekend on this and I don’t advise you to do the same.
