The Gorge (2025)

Starring: Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver

Directed by: Scott Derrickson

Where It’s Available: Apple TV 

I’ve been watching a fair amount of Apple TV lately. Severance is the hottest shit on television right now. Before that, season two of Silo was fantastic, engaging, week-to-week television. Before what seems like every episode I was greeted with an ad for this movie. It looked interesting - who doesn’t like Anya Taylor-Joy, after all? I don’t think she’s capable of making a bad film. But I didn’t quite know what to expect going in. And now, after having watched it, this seems completely by design.

The top-level description I can give you is that this movie is part-action, part-horror, part-espionage thriller and part-romance. If that seems like a lot, well… it kind of *is*? But for all those spinning plates, it’s remarkably competent and it does at a bare minimum a passable job in every one of those genres.

The film is about two lonely special ops assassins who are tasked to guard opposite sides of a mysterious gorge somewhere “in the northern hemisphere”. Drasa, a Lithuanian sniper (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) guards the east side and Levi, an American sniper (Miles Teller) guards the west. What little plot exposition we’re given is provided by Levi’s outgoing predecessor, a British SAS soldier named JD (Sope Dirisu). Sigourney Weaver is also around as a high-level spook. But the vast majority of the film is the two principle characters engaging, flirting and falling in love while being separated by a 1.5 km chasm.

I won’t touch on the plot points too much because there are some surprises, but the thing that struck me the most after watching was just how competent the screenplay was. There was no wasted breath. No plot left hanging. There are action points that are mentioned in act 1 that you see paid off in act 3 in very satisfying ways. I had to look up the screenwriter (I knew the director - Scott Derrickson is a decent name, helming the original ‘Dr Strange’ and the fantastic Ethan Hawke horror flick, ‘The Black Phone’ among others) and was surprised to see that scriptor Zach Dean also wrote the Chris Pratt direct-to-streaming dreck ‘The Tomorrow War’ and the most recent Fast and Furious film, ‘Fast X’. Suffice it to say, this is quite clearly the strongest screenplay he’s produced. 

The Good: The love story between Levi and Drasa is incredibly sweet, adorable and believable. They are two lonely individuals who are guarded and closed-off by the very nature of their jobs (it’s hard to ‘get close’ to someone when you’re putting a bullet in them from 3 kilometres away - in one tender moment, they share the ways they try and cope and compartmentalize the nature of their job and Levi drops a real banger of a line, “When you bury enough secrets, the graveyard runs out of room.”) Levi is brooding and angst, Drasa is more open, outgoing and uses humour as a coping mechanism. Their meet-cute is sweet and incredibly satisfying and the two leads have real energy and chemistry that makes it easy to root for them. The ‘romance’ segment of the Voltron that is this film is undoubtedly the head.

The Bad: It’s difficult and perhaps unfair to call out Sigourney Weaver here, but the simple fact is that she seems horribly under-utilized in this role. It was like the casting director said, “We need a third name for this movie!” but she only gets about 4 minutes of screen-time. Literally any middle-aged white woman could have filled her high heels here.

The Ugly: It’s not a huge point in the advertisements, but I feel it’s important to point out that there is some SERIOUS body-horror in this movie, as well as some jump scares in act 2. My partner screamed out loud a few times. It isn’t out of place. It works in the context of the story. But it can feel jarring -like someone backstage turned the knob from ‘romance’ to ‘shit-your-pants-horror’.

Is It OK For Kids?: It’s rated 14A in Canada - likely rated R in the US. There’s not a lot of blood, but the aforementioned body horror would give the little ones nightmares. Probably rate this one T-for-Teen.

The Verdict: The Gorge’ is a great little surprise of a film that punches way above its weight class thanks to great performances from the two leads (they are literally the only actors we see on-screen for 75% of the film, so it really hinges on them - and they are definitely up to the task) and a script that manages to pay off every gun Chekhov left sitting on the counter. It’s intelligent, smart, sweet and, yes, a little scary - and FAR better than almost any ‘direct to streaming’ film you’re likely to watch this year. 7.5/10