Two snipers (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) with allegiances have been tasked with guarding the opposite sides of a mysterious gorge.
Something is in the gorge. And these two have to make sure it never gets out.
As time passes and their loneliness grows, the two strangers are drawn together.
In trying to reach each other, the pair are forced to uncover the mysteries of the gorge.
The Gorge is not a good movie.
The premise is fun - the set-up for either a pleasing b-movie or something introspective.
The film tries to thread the needle between potboiler and bodice-ripper, anchoring the movie around a romantic storyline.
In many ways, it reminded me of Heart Eyes - like that movie, it is a strait-laced love story.
There is no winking or joking (aside from an over-confident in-joke about the stars’ most famous roles).
Teller is fine as the emotionally stunted American, while Taylor-Joy brings a welcome dose of whimsy and humour as his counterpart - a great puncturing of the stereotype of the silent Russian killer.
That commitment to the love story is the most interesting aspect of the movie.
The early interplay between the characters is helped by Teller and Taylor-Joy having good chemistry. You buy their attraction so much that when he finally decides to cross the gorge, you buy it.
The love story is so potent that when the movie shifts back toward the plot, it loses its mojo.
Scott Derrickson is an established genre filmmaker, and makes a decent fist of the early action scenes. The atmosphere is deflated by an over-reliance on CGI to render the villains.
This is an okay movie that is touching greatness.
The love story is compelling, but focus of the movie is a supernatural horror-action piece that never feels as fully-realised.
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