Starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy

Directed by Scott Derrickson

Apple TV+

Levi (Miles Teller) and Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) are snipers who are too good, and too burned out, to let out into the world. They’re independently offered a job guarding the Gorge, a satellite-cloaked, 500 foot deep abyss so classified they’re drugged on the flight in so they don’t know where they are. The job lasts a year and is simple: maintain the Gorge’s defences, not to stop anyone getting in, but to stop anything getting out…

Scott Derrickson’s clean lines and clear style have given us some of the best Western horror movies of the last few years including both Sinister and the superb The Black Phone. Here he steps into action horror and away from frequent collaborator C. Robert Cargill (one of the producers here rather than the writer). The script comes instead from Zach Dean whose credits include The Tomorrow War, story work for both Fast X and the upcoming Fast XI and Michael Douglas fishing drama Blood Knot. Dean is all over the map in genre terms but here he delivers a focused, tight piece of contemporary pulp that Derrickson sets at a gallop and never slows down. The action scenes here are always pleasingly gnarly, shot through with heavy metal aesthetics and a sense of actual danger. Levi’s first problem when he arrives in the Gorge is one of the more memorably horrible creature designs I’ve ever seen. Also, if you hate spiders, or skulls, there’s a sequence here which you’re going to have no fun with at all. It’s great, constantly balancing maniacal invention with skin-crawling horror, but it’s a lot. For Levi, Drasa, and you.

The key to enjoying The Gorge is to remember it’s a romance. The key to the romance is that Derrickson has Teller and Joy, two actors with deserved reputations for tending to play either unlikable or distant characters, into their images. Teller continues the gentle, mournful work he began in Top Gun Maverick as a poetry-loving, old-fashioned sweetheart of a man whose primary skill is killing people. Joy brings her usual charm and presence but marries it to moments of total emotional vulnerability. Levi knows he’s broken, Drasa thinks she’s fine. They meet in the middle literally and metaphorically.

This sweet, genuine core is wrapped around some beautifully designed monsters and nicely handled action. If nothing else, the heavy metal MacGyver moment that gets them out of the Gorge is great.

For all that though, there are issues. One character is unlucky, then stupid, then unlucky for no reason other than the plot needs someone to be. Similarly, some people will get sniffy about a few low end special effects and that’s understandable. But this is a movie that manages to have both heart and fangs.

Verdict: The two leads turn in excellent work and there’s a fun Sigourney Weaver cameo but ultimately this is a smart, well-handled piece of action horror that remembers to make you care. And I did. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart