SCREEN | Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy Protect 'The Gorge'

"You bury enough secrets, the graveyard runs out of room."

Apple Original Films / Skydance

The Gorge stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy as hired guns tasked with protecting the undisclosed titular narrow land passage from unnatural creatures beneath while being stationed alone at opposing ends of the mysterious outpost. Genre filmmaker Scott Derrickson directs the remote action horror romance with just barely enough stylish verve to maintain our limited streaming-dominated attention spans but not much else.

Teller and Taylor-Joy's Levi and Drasa make for dynamic counterpart leads carrying all of the action by themselves before coming together to fight against their zombie-like aggressors. However, the fairly thin setup quickly devolves into a series of shoot 'ems, attacks, escapes, and video game-style level battles. How the true nature and secrets of what they were actually hired to do is ultimately revealed and the origins of what lies beneath the gorge are not particularly interesting or compelling.

Screenwriter Zach Dean's straightforward script uses the Hellmouth chasm as a fun metaphor for the unknown and loneliness before becoming a fairly standard point-and-shoot survivalist genre entry. The Gorge never quite does anything beyond its generic premise and feels not much more than a higher-budget direct-to-video actioner with movie stars.

The Gorge will be available to stream on Apple TV+ starting February 14th.


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