One way to make a movie about a mysterious chasm with a guard tower on either side is to leave the contents of the chasm a mystery for most, if not all, of the running time. That’s the sort of film favoured by the arthouse crowd. AppleTV+ is not particularly looking to lure such a crowd into its original content starring two name actors, so they’ve gone for the other way of making this movie. Which is to leave the chasm a mystery for about 20 minutes, then crank the CG up to 11.

Despite the more dispiriting option being chosen, Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge has some decent prestige elements going for it. The two-hander stars Anya Taylor-Joy, well on her way to the A list if not already there, and Miles Teller, who was on his way there but took a bit of a detour. It’s also got a typically thoughtful score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who are much more likely to ply their trade for more visionary directors (David Fincher, Luca Guadagnino) than for someone of Derrickson’s middling reputation. The good ingredients leave this film short of real distinctiveness, unfortunately.

The guard in each tower knows as little as possible about their mission, by design. They don’t even know the country into which they’ve been deposited. The post is meant to last a year, but it may only be a perception that they’re overseen by different, competing entities and that the overlap of the current changeover is coincidental. The western side does seem to have a history of what we would consider western occupants, such as the departing British guard, who is being replaced by Levi (Teller), an American and would-be Marine who couldn’t pass the psych test and has now become an independent contractor. On the eastern side, the new occupant is a Lithuanian working for the Kremlin, Drasa (Taylor-Joy). The job is simple: keep anything from leaving the gorge, by hook or by crook.

Levi and Drasa would ordinarily have no relationship, as it’s something like several hundred meters across, and their only external contact is a monthly radio check-in with a supervising entity, where they need to use a coded sequence just to identify themselves. However, both have too much of a joie de vivre to stick to ordinary mission parameters. So they begin communicating with handwritten signs across the gap, which they still need binoculars to see, and over time, their communication becomes intricate enough to play a game of distance chess. Even this is eventually not enough, and one takes the initiative to bridge the gap using available equipment.

During this time, they’re getting some idea what may be below, due to the strange sounds emitting from the gorge, and occasional attempts to bypass the line of dangling mines that are meant to keep the gorge’s occupants at bay. Of course, it wouldn’t be the second type of movie listed above if both guards weren’t going to get up close and personal with the unknown soon enough.

For a film we’ve already revealed uses CGI, The Gorge has some pretty good examples of that form. We won’t reveal what’s actually down there, though there are times when you are put in mind of a film like Alex Garland’s Annihilation. Where Garland trumps Derrickson, though, is in suffusing his proceedings with twin tones of strangeness and dread. Derrickson’s film, written by Zach Dean, presents its unnerving elements flatly, matter of factly, without building them up in our minds first. This is not for lack of understanding that such build-up is necessary, since there are gestures toward that. They just don’t land. So each stimulus we’re faced with is just sort of there because it is, not because it is some new clue to understanding what’s in the gorge or what may have happened there.

There’s an explanation for that, to be sure. It involves a standard issue shadowy organisation called DarkLake, which gives us our third movie star with a much longer history in this film’s preferred milieu of science fiction horror: Sigourney Weaver. Weaver plays the shadowy organisation’s head honcho, and she issues predictable orders to exterminate with extreme prejudice when Levi and Drasa get too close to the truth they’re unwittingly containing.

Taylor-Joy and Teller do their part, individually and jointly. They do develop some good chemistry and even get a bit of a sentimental underpinning of their growing bond. The ways they get themselves in and out of danger are not excessively reliant on having an unbelievable quantity of spare bullets, and there are some clever uses of available resources.

The Gorge, though, is a movie that relies excessively on the concept of “some.” It does some of what a movie like this should do, while never getting all the way to the place that would leave you confident about recommending it. Which is maybe why I have only used “some” of the available word count for this review. With some movies, there just isn’t a lot more to say.

 

The Gorge is currently streaming on AppleTV+.