Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) directs Zach Dean’s (Deadfall, The Tomorrow War) script about two highly trained snipers—Levi (Miles Teller) and Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy)—stationed on either side of a vast crevice containing a mysterious evil that must be contained. When the evil emerges, they work together to survive. (127 min.)
Glen: The film begins by introducing our two leads, showing us they’ve got personal baggage out the yin-yang. Soon they’re both on-site, and even though they’ve been ordered not to communicate, Drasa and Levi meet-cute by writing messages to one another that they read with binoculars. It doesn’t take long for the so called “hollow men” to emerge from the gorge and try to attack them. Cue flying bullets and exploding monsters. They soon realize that by working together, they have a better chance of survival. Eventually, we’ll all discover what’s really going on down there. So what we have here is a rom-com wrapped in a sci-fi horror mystery with a frosting of family drama thanks to Drasa’s dad, Erikas (William Houston), who’s promised to off himself on Valentine’s Day so he can rest next to Drasa’s dead mom. Aw, sweet! We also have Sigourney Weaver as Bartholomew, who it turns out works for a corporation called Darklake. In essence, this film wants to be all things to all people but instead is a semi-hot mess.
Anna: Luckily this film is straight to streaming, so if you’re an Apple TV subscriber, the only thing you’d be wasting on it is your time. I like both leads—Taylor-Joy and Teller both have their charms. But it just wasn’t enough for me to put this film up too far in the ranks. Granted, this type of film has a rough chance with me to start with. Admittedly, some of the banter between the leads comes off as cute, and the two loners do have chemistry, but there’s definitely some groan-inducing dialogue, and even with the hollow men emerging from the mist, the stakes didn’t feel high enough to engage me. There’s an evil corporation and a mystery for Levi to piece together, but it all fell pretty flat. It also felt like they could have cut this film way down—at more than two hours, this flick would have benefitted from another run through the editing bay.
Glen: Yeah, some of the platitudes Levi utters are beyond corny. Poets, eh? Things get a bit more exciting when the two find themselves in the gorge scrambling to get out. All manner of creepy human-animal hybrids abound, and how they came to be is a twist that won’t surprise anyone who’s ever seen a sci-fi movie involving a shadowy corporation. If you don’t have Apple TV, this earnest genre-masher isn’t enough to warrant signing up, but if you have a subscription and couple of hours to waste, you might like it. I will say this: Despite the ridiculousness of the story, our leads are trying their damnedest to sell it. That said, maybe if the film didn’t take itself so damn seriously, it might have been so bad it’s good.
Anna: The hollow men did have some interesting special effects that gave them a sort of half tree, half zombie look, and their underworld forest-like setting was creepily scenic. Movies aren’t an easy to make or get made, so even when a film doesn’t quite get it right, it still represents a lot of work by a lot of people, and The Gorge was an ambitious undertaking for these two leads. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough there for them to make it shine.
New Times Arts Editor Glen Starkey and freelancer Anna Starkey write Sun Screen. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 20 – Mar 2, 2025.