'The Gorge' Review: A Mammoth Chasm of Missed Opportunity
With films under his belt such as ‘The Black Phone’, ‘Sinister’ and ‘Doctor Strange’, director Scott Derrikson should be a much talked auteur. Instead ‘The Gorge’ merely adds another film in a growing list of visually stunning yet ultimately flawed films.
It’s perhaps a rare cinematic dichotomy that a director can be both an auteur and yet still not know exactly who he, she or they might be as a filmmaker. Perhaps they have a distinct style. Perhaps they have a subtle calling card that when someone reveals who the director is, or what they’ve made before, a casual viewer will think to themselves “oh, ok… that makes sense” as they can pick up on identifiers within the films to link them together. But to be able to do that, and yet create a series of films that somehow cannot be defined or packaged or that even lack continuity within themselves is an impossible balance. This is where director Scott Derrikson could easily be categorized.
Derrikson is a filmmaker who has created a string of unforgettable, frightening and visually stunning work. Certainly someone who should be real name in the industry. When you watch a Derrikson film like ‘The Black Phone’, ‘Sinister’ and even the Keanu Reeves driven remake of T’he Day the Earth Stood Still’, there are common stylistic elements that are undoubtedly recognizable. Yet, perhaps with the exception of ‘Doctor Strange’, Derrikson has never really broken through with a truly impactful film.
Good films? Yes. Great films? …nope.
Which is once again the case with ‘The Gorge’ - a mixed bag of ideas and genres. The film follows two highly-trained operatives who are given a year-long mission to live alone in two guard towers on opposite sides of a vast and highly classified gorge. On the Western front, Levi Kane (Miles Teller), a name apparently ripped from the Big Book of Baby names for Future Wrestlers, representing everything America is about - big guns, killing, and staying quiet about it. On the nondescript Eastern European side is Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) who, naturally shows the American boy how to truly live. Together they have to protect the world from a mysterious evil that lurks within and keep the secrets in the gorge.
The blame should predominantly be given to writer Zach Dean for the film’s faults. Dean also brought us Apple’s utterly forgettable Chris Pratt vehicle ‘The Tomorrow War’. It’s perhaps perfect that Dean has created two major projects for Apple, as his films are akin to the hag in Snow White offering a delicious treat. It might be packaged as bruise-free and shiny, but take enough bites and you’ll discover the poisonous core. Dean has proven more than once that he cannot seemingly focus on what he wants to say or the story he wants to tell with his films, and this naturally trickles down (or sideways) to Derrikson as director. Dean apparently had so many bits and pieces of inspiration and imagination, he could have filled up The Gorge with empty concepts. He took two hundred pounds of ‘Resident Evil’, a metric ton of ‘Annihilation’, a few pebbles of what ‘The Mist’ could have looked like, and the bedrock was all grounded in ‘Stranger Things’. It isn’t clear if this was a part of Dean’s original description of the world found deep within The Gorge, or if it is Derrikson as a visual auteur who created the real look of the film but sadly it does seem to be a mixed-bag of horror-fantasy you’ve likely seen before.
Audiences should also be wary of trying to overthink the Gorge, which sadly - doesn’t take all that much thought. It was refreshing to see that several of the questions the film poses in terms of holes in the plot or loose threads, and eventually addressed, but most certainly not all of those threads are tied up. The audiences suspension of disbelief grows wider and wider until the iconic gorge is not the only massive abyss attached to the film. Not the least of which is if this is such a potentially world-ending mystery, why are there are only two people positioned to over an entire gorge, and why are they stationed directly across from one another? It’s a gorge, not a crater. It’s like asking a 400 pound Center in football to cover a wide receiver, there’s a lot of the field you’re not going to cover with that play call.
However, the dark fantasy elements of the story are by no means the most interesting. Audiences might have even been able to forgive them, if perhaps Dean and the production recognized what the strength of the story could have been. Aside from the mystery of the actual gorge, they also throw in love story which, in a film filled with mutants, skull spiders and… Sigourney Weaver, stuck out as the most incongruous thing. All the love story proved to me was that Taylor-Joy, that goddess so befitting of the latter half of her surname could have chemistry with anyone. Teller, who has certainly proven himself a capable actor, must be jealous of the new Fantastic Four film coming out this summer. He clearly misses the opportunity to play a member of the iconic first family of Marvel, but decided he would be so stoic and rock-like in The Gorge, the film was instead going to be his audition to play The Thing.
The film could have been an interesting character driven piece about two people who had to literally traverse a gorge to find each other, and find love. At its best, it was a study about loneliness, and the two stars are certainly talented enough performers that they could have driven the story forward with their character. Instead The Gorge gives in to its more baser instincts to become a flimsy action-horror film with an unbelievably forgettable third act. Audiences get a taste of what feels like six different films every 20 minutes, which rarely works, and more importantly, makes it feel, as previously mentioned, that neither Dean nor Derrikson knew what story they wanted to tell.
Those not looking for real depth, or anything completely original will likely enjoy The Gorge, on the surface, this delicious looking apple does offer enough of a spectacle for the eyes and enough in the fantasty and action genres it tries to represent to not be a complete waste of time. Yet this writer simply cannot ignore what could have been. Two amazing actors at the height of their talent are wasted on cold-war caricature and a flimsy romance. Visuals that could have trule changed the game, similar to Derrikson’s Marvel work left to feel redundant rather than revolutionary. The Gorge certainly some great visuals, and is a very facinating concept, but like Derrikson’s prior films, the amazing and possibly terrifying visuals get lost in under developed characters, and with Dean’s prior scripts, you simply cannot question the science or logic at all, or the entire gorge will collapse in on itself.