The Gorge - Review

Love at First Scope: When Your Soulmate is 800 Meters Away and So is a Flesh-Eating Nightmare

Ever wondered what happens when you mix You’ve Got Mail with Doom and then sprinkle in a romance that makes The Notebook look like an HR violation? Well, wonder no more, because The Gorge has arrived, bringing with it a sniper-based meet-cute, some aggressively questionable monster lore, and enough misty cinematography to make even Silent Hill say, “Okay, dial it back.”

Directed by Scott Derrickson (Sinister, The Black Phone), this Apple Original is a genre blender on steroids, tossing romance, action, sci-fi, and horror into a cinematic smoothie that somehow tastes both delicious and slightly expired. It stars Miles Teller as Levi, a broody ex-Marine-turned-freelance-sniper (because apparently, that’s a LinkedIn job title now) and Anya Taylor-Joy as Darsa, an equally lethal but significantly more charming sniper stationed on the opposite side of a giant, gaping Hellmouth. Their job? Make sure nothing crawls out of it. Their problem? They’re way too hot to be this isolated.

Levi is the kind of guy who stares into the abyss—and the abyss blushes and writes him a love note in sniper code.

Now, The Gorge starts off strong, largely because it leans into its most absurd concept: long-distance sniper romance. Levi and Darsa spend their days trading flirtatious notes via binoculars, playing long-range chess (which feels like an unfair advantage for whoever has the white pieces), and bonding over their shared trauma while occasionally head-shotting demonic escapees from this pit of despair. It’s ridiculous, but you know what? It works. Why? Because Teller and Taylor-Joy sell the hell out of it. Their chemistry is so good that you almost forget they’re stationed above what is essentially Jurassic Park for eldritch abominations.

And speaking of monsters—oh boy. The creatures in The Gorge are like someone raided the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest concept bin and said, “Yeah, but what if they were even weirder?” At first, it’s all effective—Lovecraftian horrors creeping through the mist, unsettling glimpses of something beyond human comprehension. But then… the movie starts explaining things. And, folks, nothing kills cosmic horror quite like exposition. When the script starts handing out backstory like it’s a TED Talk on demonology, the fear factor plummets. The Gorge? Turns out it’s not just a gorge. It’s well... far less interesting than “A giant pit where nightmares live, and no one questions it.”

Anya Taylor-Joy looks like she belongs in a Renaissance painting but fights like she was trained by John Wick’s scarier older sister.

Visually, The Gorge is a treat—cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis gives us eerie, mist-drenched landscapes, and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross lay down a score that alternates between ethereal beauty and oh-god-something’s-about-to-eat-me tension. But then there’s the CGI, which is where things get… dicey. Some creatures look amazing; others look like they escaped from a PS3 cutscene. And while Derrickson directs the action with his usual flair, some sequences feel oddly weightless, like they were filmed inside a particularly expensive screensaver.

And then we hit the third act, where The Gorge decides it wants to be more than just “snipers in love.” It wants to explain itself. Which is unfortunate, because when you spend an hour building up dread, the last thing you want to do is demystify your nightmares. By the time the film gets to its big revelations, we’re less “Wow, that’s mind-blowing” and more “Wait, that’s it?” It’s the cinematic equivalent of a magician spending 90 minutes making you believe in magic, then ending the show by explaining how the rabbit got into the hat.

But here’s the thing: The Gorge is still fun. Sure, it fumbles its cosmic horror ambitions, and yeah, it could have left more to the imagination, but when it focuses on its strengths—two hot people sniping monsters and falling in love—it works. Teller broods, Taylor-Joy radiates charisma, and at the end of the day, sometimes you just want to watch sexy, emotionally damaged mercenaries shoot nightmare creatures while sticking it to the shadow government.

So what does Bryan bestow upon this sniper-fueled fever dream?

4 out of 5 Bryans. That’s right. A whole four. Is it flawed? Absolutely. Did I still have a damn good time? You bet your mist-soaked, monster-infested, long-distance-binocular-romance-having ass I did.

The Gorge - 4/5