The Gorge

145

The only word I can think of for The Gorge is slapdash. I’m not saying the people who ended up creating and producing it didn’t put in the effort, but beyond the main conceit, there is so much sloppiness, so many dead-end story points and absolutely so many nonsensical decisions and continuity and logic issues that I can’t see how else to categorize it. Plus, it just looks kind of janky. Like those old films where characters are having conversations in moving cars, sitting still while the background scrolls by. And just so much fog, murk and drabness that made it feel more like they were covering something up than creating a mood. This film is basically a two-hander romantic sci-fi horror film starring two high-priced actors where the filmmakers don’t really take advantage of the acting, enacting a stilted script and character backstories that are stapled on and inconsequential. Which all makes me ask: why bother?

So, you hire Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy for your film. Both of their careers are having a moment — though I’d classify Taylor-Joy as a “young” actor at 28 and Teller as a more of a mid-career actor at 38. And then you grab Sigourney Weaver to play that thankless, cardboard two-minute guest role as the soulless corporatist her stature and presence has allowed her to play several times now. There’s one very short scene with her and Teller, but otherwise she’s basically alone on a set in front of a green screen that they cut to a couple times. It feels very tacked on and very cynical in its casting and usage. Anyway, they build some nonsense backstories about the two characters being amazing snipers — they both have like the “world record” for kills at long distances or something — and for some stupid reason make Taylor-Joy’s Drasa character Lithuanian and make her do a goofy “Eastern European” accent that she… does not keep up. Like not even remotely. Teller’s Levi Kane — which is a strangely “ethnic” name for this character — is a retired marine and current gun-for-hire with PTSD who is recruited by Weaver’s character whom he just assumes is CIA. He doesn’t ask for ID, apparently doesn’t sign a contract, doesn’t even seem to ask what the job pays, but just kind of shrugs and takes the job because he apparently can’t do government work because he failed a psych test. That feels like an incredibly unlikely thing to happen, but certainly not the least likely of the completely unlikely things that happen in this film. Taylor-Joy’s character is an assassin, I think, hired mostly by the Kremlin to murder people at long range. That part is completely yada-yada’d and seems like she might be an evil baddie? Anyhow, that’s softened by the fact she has an ex-KGB dying father who plays the accordion and loves her, but is going to kill himself on Valentine’s day? She’s been exposed by drone footage and because of this “can’t work for a year.” Honestly, what the hell? Point being, I think they’re trying to tell us that both characters have no other choice to earn a paycheck (what that pay is we have no idea) than to be dropped in this isolated outpost for a year to guard a gorge. Makes total sense.

The two are drugged, put on planes and dropped in some undisclosed mountainous location. They make their way to two towers on the opposite side of a foggy gorge and replace the current occupants who rotate off. They don’t know where in the world they are and have no idea what’s in the gorge. We don’t see Drasa’s onboarding, but Levi gets the low-down about the equipment, the check-ins and not much more. He seems oddly not curious about what the hell is going on. The guy he replaces doesn’t mention the monster creatures that seem to want to crawl out of the gorge on a semi-regular basis. Seems like it might be a good thing to mention. But, nah, that would ruin the surprise for the audience. I have to stop here because there is so much stupidity and such poor writing that I could go on and on. But suffice it to say that both Levi and Drasa are bored (and so are we). And to that end they eventually start communicating. Which is supposed to be verboten. Once again, the dude Levi took over for said he maybe saw some movement in the other tower, but somehow with the mounted high-powered binoculars and the hand-held equally powerful binoculars (!) he never saw the other person out on the balcony of the tower? Where Levi and Drasa spend the vast majority of the movie? What the actual hell? No sense, dude. Anyway, they flirt. They shoot at each other in a friendly contest with guns mounted with non-magnifying scopes but somehow… don’t ask. They make goo-goo eyes at one another and seemingly out of boredom and horniness, Levi devises a way to get over to her tower across the gorge. For a dude with hundreds of confirmed kills (which are presented back to him by Weaver’s character like a video game score) he comes off as incredibly shy and meek. He writes amateur poetry and lies about not being a good dancer for some reason.

Did I mention that neither of them seems particularly disturbed by the zombie tree guys who try to climb out of the gorge? Nope, they get together and neither — beyond a little speculation — seems freaked out that undead monsters are trying to scale walls to come maybe eat them and/or take over the world? At some point Levi says something like “Oh, they’re emaciated, maybe they want to eat us” which makes no fucking sense. They’re weird person/plant hybrid zombies, bro! And for some incredibly dumb reason — other than the screenwriter’s attempt to set up a two-person romance — they only have two people guarding this pit to hell. And some tech that only seems to kind of, sort of work depending on if the director remembers it’s supposed to work? No, seriously, there are laser tripwires that are supposed to set off auto-machine guns at the top of the gorge walls, but those only seem to go off when the filmmakers remember they’re a thing and/or it’s convenient. Continuity is a biatch. Point is, maybe you place more than two people in two rusting towers to make sure the world doesn’t end. And I honestly can’t be the only person whose brain went to The Wall in Game of Thrones here. Not the least of which is the fact the zombie dudes look an awful lot like the White Walkers. The whole thing is almost uncanny. Hmmm. You also just know at some juncture one of them is going to fall into the gorge and have to fight their way out. And that it’s going to happen right after they… cement their relationship. And there it goes. And this is where the movie becomes a poor version of Annihilation. Or a third-rate The Last of Us. We move from the two sitting in their towers, with the clearly stitched-in backgrounds of Norway in the background ,to the gorge forest that also, for some reason, has an old church in it? And… a river that flows out of the gorge, which I think — and I’m no topographic expert here — would defeat the whole purpose of the movie, as the zombies could just float out of the gorge on the river and the “contagions” would also flow to all the surrounding areas in the river water. There is also a computer from the 2000s down there — even though supposedly nobody has been down there since the 1940s — that so luckily has all the “secrets” on it with no password or log-in info needed! My gosh, what luck. What stupid fucking writing. There’s also a Jeep from the 1940s that ends up playing a significant role that just starts right up. And, yes, they explain that things run on propane, which doesn’t degrade over time, but an engine that hasn’t run in 80 years probably wouldn’t turn over right away.

There are additional plot holes, physics anomalies, misunderstanding of how nuclear weapons work, nonsensical CGI ghost-like things, lack of an explanation why a contaminant would still be smoking after 80 years and somehow not floating up past the fog layer of the gorge, how a weak grappling hook thing that didn’t previously exist can suddenly shoot all the way across the gorge and many, many more dumb and stupid things. I’ve already pretty much spoiled this thing, so I’ll go further. What happened to Drasa’s dad? That seemed like such a crucial plot point to her character, but it was just a dead end. How, after escaping the gorge and running from a nuclear blast, did she possibly get to France? With no food, no idea where she is, no GPS, no identification, no money from the middle of absolutely nowhere. Eh, let’s just have her there on the lovely French coast at the end of the movie and call it fine. And, yes, you blew up one helicopter from this evil corporation with one executive onboard, but they’re not going to be looking for you? They murder anyone and everyone who knows about the gorge, so they’re not hunting you down while you waitress at a bar/hotel? And Levi just kind of shows up — also somehow making his way to France with what he said was clearly serious injuries — and cutely orders the rabbit pie? What are we doing here? Why is this allowed to stand? Oh, and the big question was if they were infected by the contagion. We see Drasa count her days in a cave for some reason? As if she couldn’t have been hiking out of the isolated mountains those five days? Like who is she going to run across to infect? Why is she in a cave just sitting there for five days? What is she eating? It makes no sense! And I guess we just assume Levi was also fine because here he is seemingly in great shape at the restaurant. You know, so they can just kiss and roll credits.

This is the longest review I’ve ever written for a movie that has only grown more frustrating in the twelve hours since I watched it. More insulting of our intelligence. More insane that it got made and nobody looked at a first cut and asked some of these questions and more. It sounds like this was always written as a movie, but it feels like someone took an eight-episode series and just chopped pieces out of it to make it fit into a two-hour film. It wouldn’t help explain some of the logic and science missteps, but might help wave away some of the giant plot holes and non-explanations of motivation and reactions. Slapdash, man. Slapdash.