THE GORGE (2025)
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars
THE GORGE is a clever sci-fi thriller until it gets too complicated for its own good.
The first half of Scott Derrickson's THE GORGE works quite well. It focuses on the simple set up of two snipers on opposite sides of the mysterious gorge (which we're told could be the door to hell). Isolated, the two form a bond and the movie shifts into a romance story with a very unconventional setting. Miles and Ana have great chemistry and this entire portion of the movie, including a surprise attack by the gorge monsters, is top notch.
Then, and I'm not revealing anything that hasn't been shown in a trailer, one of the two lovers falls in the gorge. Initially the design of this mysterious place is fascinating and the attackers, especially the ones on horseback, make you really believe that our characters might be in hell. But the movie has to of course explain itself (or did it? Could the gorge have remained a mystery and the rule-breaking of the heroes sufficed as the main conflict?) and that's when Scott's movie derails. We get scene after scene of Miles and Ana figuring it out, sometimes far too conveniently. We get bogged down in exposition and video game shoot 'em up action. Some of it is still super creative, like that web of creates and the skull spiders, but it loses the originality and charm of the first half.
I have suspicion that the ending of THE GORGE we're watching on Apple TV is not what was originally scripted. If you pay close attention, you can see the set up for a very different ending, one that is far more tragic and also more romantic in the true (but not present day) sense of the word.
Watched on Apple TV.
This review was also published on my letterboxd account and will eventually be published on my Travis Mills filmmaker Facebook page