Directed by Scott Derrickson | Written by Zach Dean | 127 min | ▲1/2 | Apple TV+
Back when I used to work in film production in Toronto in the 1990s — and this was before X-Men and Good Will Hunting made the city a legitimate hub for quality features — a producer I used to work with would say that if a “big” Hollywood movie was coming to town, “there was something wrong with it.”
I’m starting to suspect something similar about many of the recent genre pictures on streaming, particularly on Apple TV+. The Instigators was a fun Friday night, but it didn’t really register long in my memory. Wolfs was pleasant, but even more forgettable. Ghosted, awful.
That brings us to The Gorge, which unfortunately commits many of the crimes associated with these streaming movies — talented creatives not hitting their marks.
Levi (Miles Teller) is a former Marine with a thousand-yard-stare. He’s a highly-skilled contract killer, able to shoot with incredible accuracy from a distance. He’s been told he doesn’t have the psychological resilience to do the job anymore, but Sigourney Weaver doesn’t mind. She sends him on a year-long assignment. He’ll be the only guardian in a tower on the west side of a gorge in a corner of the world he can’t identify. His predecessor in the position, JD (Sope Dirisu), gives him the spiel: The job is to keep whatever is in the gorge from getting out.
Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a Lithuanian sniper, with the same set of skills as Levi. She’s on the eastern tower. Though they’re not supposed to have any contact, she doesn’t care. She plays The Ramones and dances and writes messages to him on her drawing pad. Soon they’ve got a sweet long-distance situationship going on.
Which is all fine. The key issue here is how bad this movie looks. Both tower sets are clearly in a studio, the lighting flat and obvious. None of this looks like it’s real, so none of the stakes feel real. Given the genuine talent on this — I’m looking at you, Oscar-winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross — it’s all so dull. For the first time in their career you can tell Reznor and Ross are recycling better ideas from scores like The Social Network and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Taylor-Joy brings her movie-star charisma to bear, but the silliness of this entire production becomes clear when it indulges in a Queen’s Gambit in-joke, and, right after, a Whiplash gag. Teller also has charisma, though his reminds me more of someone like Victor Mature. She’s better than this material, I’m not sure he is.
Their geographically impeded romance is the best and most playful part of the movie. In a better quality picture where these two characters cross paths, fall in love, and then have to step away from their Jason Bourne-esque lives in order to be together, this chemistry could work.
The second half of The Gorge couldn’t be more different than the first. It involves our sexy-but-lethal couple getting down there and discovering its secrets — some creepy things, though the humanoid creatures a lot less so once you realize they all look like Groot.
The second half is an extended First Person Shooter, with about the same level of depth and plot coherence. The action is diverting, though the visuals go from feeling ersatz to a straight-on digital gloom or maybe a rip-off of Alien or The Mist. An effort to escape from the gorge conveniently ignores a plot point earlier established — automated weaponry aimed at keeping the things down there from coming out is suddenly a non-issue — but by then you won’t care.
Once again, a streaming-only actioner just barely keeps your interest, only kind-of making sense, and using stars to lure us in and then trapping us for an unjustified running time. It’s better than Ghosted, but that’s not saying much.
