L Movie Review 2The Gorge is the first good date movie of 2025, a far-fetched but resiliently entertaining shotgun marriage of two distinct yet equally bankable genres: the long-distance romance and the zombie thriller. The high-concept premise draws you in with its portents of supernatural horror, and the movie makes good on its promises, though not in the way you were expecting. If the second half is ultimately compromised by the narrow confines of the action-thriller, the first half is sufficiently endearing to cast a glow over the entire enterprise.

Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy — reveling in their status as Next-Gen Hollywood icons — star as black-ops sharpshooters assigned by a shady billionaire (Sigourney Weaver) to a remote forest in some unspecified corner of the globe. For one year, they are to be the sole inhabitants of two skyscraping towers standing on either side of an enormous, fog-shrouded ravine, from which ungodly sounds occasionally emanate. The small band of cultists who consider Michael Mann’s The Keep a forgotten horror classic might get an appreciable shudder from the line that summarizes their mission: “You need to stop what’s in the gorge from coming out.”

Across this impossible chasm, the two assassins notice each other’s existence and begin communicating, first via binoculars and whiteboards, then by the purest communication known to exist between human beings: rock ’n’ roll. Director Scott Derrickson, a well-documented student of film (I should know; I was his film student at Biola University), creates some well-wrought effects from this voyeuristic tête-à-tête, warmly recalling the first-person POV perspectives from Rear Window, without going to Hitchcock’s durational extremes. The relationship that arises from this situation is plausible enough to warrant a fair amount of personal investment from the audience, so that when they inevitably break protocol and enter the gorge, following a freak accident, the stakes are sufficiently high. You want them to make it out of there alive. 

The descent into Hell, as it were, carries with it a certain mythical resonance (Orpheus and Eurydice, Hercules and Cerberus, etc.), but also marks an equally steep nosedive into CGI hokum. What lies at the bottom of the gorge isn’t Hell at all but a massive science experiment gone awry. The results of that disaster are the “hollow men” (yes, there are T.S. Eliot references galore — these snipers are a bookish sort), who are a mashup of various flora and fauna. An influx of shoot-em-up situations proceed from this revelation, all visualized in a computer-enhanced palette of mauve and amber.

If the action element is executed with perfunctory professionalism, the relational element is conveyed with a level of care and attention that surpasses expectations. Teller accumulates sympathy in his usual understated manner, while Taylor-Joy, trying out an Eastern European accent and a brunette mop, extends the physical versatility she demonstrated in Furiosa. They are engaging in a way that surpasses the ambitions of Zach Dean’s script, and if the movie surrounding them loses its aura of supernatural dread once the bullets begin to fly, these two unlikely lovebirds remain appealing reminders of love against the odds. Happy Valentine’s Day, indeed.