Someone needs to watch the gorge. And the U.S. government thinks there’s no one better for the task than Levi.
The retired Marine sniper has no connections, no relationships. No one will miss him if he “vanishes” for a year to monitor a secret so big that not even the president knows about it.
And what is that secret?
Well, no one really knows. But the monitoring station there is made entirely of concrete. And the cliffside is covered in suspended mines, automatic sentries and “cloakers” that prevent satellites from finding the location. And deep in the fog below, Levi can hear unworldly screeches. The soldier whom Levi is set to relieve from the duty, J.D., tells him the task: to restock the mines and ammo every day, and prevent whatever creatures make those sounds from getting out.
With that simple task explained, J.D. leaves Levi to his own devices.
Except, he’s not fully alone. Because across the gorge, there’s another tower like his own, similarly equipped with sentries, mines and a lone guardsman. And despite being told not to communicate, it’s not long before the two sentries start talking.
Her name is Drasa. She’s from Lithuania. And she, like him, is an expert killer.
Despite being separated by a gorge full of ominous fog and screeching unknowns, she makes Levi feel a little less alone in the world.
Especially when she warns him that something is crawling up his tower.
Both Levi and Drasa come to their posts with respective trauma from their occupations: Levi endures frequent night terrors as a result of killing so many people. Drasa likewise carries the weight of every person she’s killed. (She states that despite her slaying wicked people, she feels terrible that she’s orphaning her target’s children.) But as they begin to communicate with each other, they’re able to unpack those issues and find a sense of peace in each other’s company.
In a similar vein, as Levi and Drasa become close, Levi finds a new appreciation for life. In the months prior to this assignment, Levi had grown depressed, stuck in a rut without any relationships or meaningful work. But as he begins to care for Drasa, he realizes that “now, it’s all flipped, and I have everything to live for.”
The two protect each other from the various creatures when they begin to attack, even risking their own lives for each other.
The soldier previously assigned to the guard the gorge tells Levi that he theorizes it’s “the door to Hell, and they’re standing guard at the gate.” Someone says the gorge is “as close to Hell as I ever want to get.” Levi quotes Buddha: “Three things cannot be hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.”
[Spoiler Warning] In the film’s revelatory twist, we discover that there is no such door to hell in the gorge. Instead, it’s revealed that the many gruesome creatures which crawl about in the depths are the result of a biochemical accident which merged human DNA with the local flora and fauna, creating some of the most gruesome-looking hybrid beings you’ve seen this side of Pan’s Labyrinth. Still, the researchers who recorded the incident write “God forgive us” on a tape of their work, and the scientist in the recording says, “May God have mercy on our souls.” They also fight against the monsters in an abandoned church.
At Christmas, we hear “O Come All Ye Faithful” in the background.
We briefly see Levi’s naked rear as he exits the shower. We also see him exit his bed in a shirt and underwear.
Drasa’s character is the first to break the “no contact” rule, a decision that quickly results in the two operatives falling in love with each other. Levi eventually constructs a way across the gorge, and the two share an intimate dance before collapsing upon each other. They passionately kiss as the scene fades to black. Drasa makes a joke about Levi “getting into her pants.”
Someone says that he plans to commit suicide due to his worsening cancer, and he’s picked out a day to do it. Levi discovers that a cluster of people voluntarily chose to die via cyanide poisoning.
Drasa assassinates a man, whom someone else claims got rich selling white phosphorous bombs and land mines. We’re told that Levi has 113 confirmed kills and 81 probable kills, though Levi admits the true number is higher.
One person is shot in the head and dies. Someone gets injured by an explosion. A character gets dragged by a horse and is knocked unconscious. A branch stabs into someone. Levi accidentally steps on broken glass, and we see him pull a piece out of his foot. Someone’s leg gets crushed. A helicopter full of people crashes and explodes, and a bomb goes off.
[Spoiler Warning] It’s not long before we see the creatures described above crawling up the side of the gorge. They’re mostly amalgamations of humans, plants and animals. We also see a variety of other creatures, like giant spiders with human skulls for bodies, a giant centipede and a giant mess of living tissue with human faces, like a sticky, pus-filled mess of pumpkin innards. And we see a skeleton whose fingers have grown long like tree roots. Levi and Drasa slay dozens of these creatures, shooting, stabbing and burning them alive, often resulting in the creatures screaming as they die. When Levi falls on the ground, the ground itself attempts to swallow him with teeth made from what looks to be a horse’s ribcage. A helicopter full of people crashes and explodes, and a bomb goes off.
The f-word is used once, and the s-word is used seven times. We hear six instances of “h—,” and there’s a single use each of “b–ch” and “d–n.”
Levi and Drasa drink alcohol a few times throughout the film. Levi references drinking “three-and-a-half ounces of booze” before bed to help him avoid night terrors. Someone references prescription medication.
None.
The Gorge plants its characters in a plot that feels like the director found the exact middle between an M. Night Shyamalan-style drama and a brooding romance. Feel free to take that as either a compliment or a criticism.
Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy take up the vast amount of screentime, but despite the two-hour runtime, they don’t overstay their welcome—an impressive feat, especially when the movie abruptly switches genres roughly halfway through from mystery-romance to action-adventure.
Content-wise, Teller and Taylor-Joy’s characters shoot their way through plenty of enemies, accruing painful injuries along the way. They’ll also let out the occasional crude word. And we briefly see a man’s naked rear, too. And some sexual activity is implied, if not shown.
From a plot standpoint alone, I don’t think The Gorge is a bad movie at all. It may very well satisfy a viewer’s itch no matter what prominent genre they’re looking to see (except if you wanted to watch a musical). But it’s not necessarily a good movie, either.
Like its commitment to a genre and the chasm that takes up the film’s attention, The Gorge simply falls somewhere in the middle.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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