The Gorge (2025) Intriguing love story/sci-fi/horror mash-up
“BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!”
The lucky seventh film from American filmmaker Scott Derrickson (Deliver Us From Evil, Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) is an intriguing and somewhat film of two distinct halves as we flirt with black operation assassins and the arrows of romantic love before diving headlong into a conspiratorial science-fiction and horror mash-up that whilst the second half of the film didn’t convince at all, I’d rather the film had stayed above ground and outside of the gorge separating our would-be lovers across the geo-political East/West divide. Released, appropriately, on Valentine’s Day 2025, The Gorge is still a fun romp and a good excuse to forget yourself for two hours at the movies and here’s a brief dissection of my favourite scene of the film:
“November”
The crack of a match, the flickering of a flame and the lighting of a single candle atop a birthday cake introduces us (via a camera angle now from behind) to a singing and joyful “Drasa” (Anya Taylor-Joy) celebrating a solitary birthday whilst on duty high in the sky and manning the lookout tower that dominates the Eastern side of the gorge. Singing, in Lithuanian, “May you have a very long life. We wish you a very long life. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”, Drasa taps a table in rhythm with the song as she both finishes singing and before blowing out the candle as we cut briefly and for the first time to “Levi” (Miles Teller) deep in thought and reading the contents of his notebook on the Western side of the gorge. Next we cut from a mildly drunk Drasa and, for the first time of many in the coming film, to both her and Levi peering through their respective high powered binoculars stationed at the top of their outposts and zooming in we find Levi now writing in his notebook. Drasa fires a single shot in the air, gaining Levi’s attention many hundreds of feet away across the gorge as he sets aside his notebook to look through his respective set of binoculars to see Drasa holding up a large, handwritten sign of “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”. Quickly, Drasa peers through her binoculars to see Levi’s reaction, which is of a one fingered, almost wait response, as he retreats inside his cabin to find a whiteboard. Quickly scribbling his response, he holds up his whiteboard with a simple if curt response of “WE ARE NOT ALLOWED CONTACT”.
Raising her eyebrows in dismay and turning the page on her large pad, Drasa quickly scribbles “MY NAME IS DRASA. TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY. I’M GOING TO DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT” and as both special operations assassins either side of the gorge smile and look at each other through their respective binoculars, Levi departs and quickly returns with his whiteboard once more and a cup, and “MY NAME IS LEVI. SHALL WE RAISE A GLASS FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY?”. Drasa raises her bottle of beer as Levi does likewise with his cup as a now wide angled shot demonstrates the huge gulf, chasm and titular gorge between them. A quick cut now establishes Drasa placing a speaker on the railing of her lookout tower before thumbing through a vast record collection and settling on “Blitzkrieg Pop (Hey Ho! Let’s Go!)” by The Ramones and then dancing happily and frantically, writing pad in hand, back to the edge of her tower. Peering through his binoculars, Levi is full of smiles for his supposed enemy across the divide as Drasa scrawls her next message: “LET’S SEE YOUR MOVES LEVI”. Now peering through her binoculars, Levi shakes his head before holding up his whiteboard and “NO CAN DO. I’M A TERRIBLE DANCER” to which Drasa immediately responds with “YOU MUST BE GOOD AT SOMETHING. WHAT CAN YOU DO?”. The quick cuts between the two continue as first Levi scrawls “I’M A PRETTY GOOD SHOT” to which Drasa immediately responds “HOW GOOD?” and with a sense of devilry, places her beer bottle on the edge of the railing of her outpost and an open invitation for Levi to demonstrate exactly how good a shot he is. Peering through her binoculars expectantly, Levi holds his hands up, almost ending their conversation as he begins to retreat back inside his cabin and playfully annoyed, Drasa shoots his cup clean from the railing, spinning toward his feet and as Levi looks through his binoculars once more he sees Drasa holding her sniper rifle above her head and bowing. Challenge accepted and not to be outdone, Levi responds by shooting Drasa’s beer bottle into smithereens. Shrieking with excitement, Drasa places another beer bottle on top of her head, inviting Levi to take his best shot but almost immediately, her attention is drawn to movement within the gorge below.
Unplugging her speaker, Drasa motions to Levi to look downward at the gorge before each are seen looking at the other in bewilderment through their respective binoculars. Now through the scope of his sniper rifle, Levi sees something moving below, but what is it? Tracking the movement he sees more, more of *them*, and quickly firing at and exploding a floating mine defending the wall of the gorge, this explosion sets in motion a huge firefight as Drasa spots movement on her side of the gorge now too. Believing the fight to be over and whatever *it* or *they* were creeping and crawling out of the gorge and up the steep walls towards their respective outposts, Drasa is now seen slowly walking through the spent shells of her rifle as a claw reaches between the railing trying to grab her.
What is *that*?
Pulling a handgun from her hip pocket Drasa shoots this creeping beast several times before finally killing it, sending it tumbling back into the gorge from where many more are still climbing and creeping and crawling towards both her and Levi on the other side. Rejoining the firefight once more, Levi now uses a semi-automatic gun turret as he destroys the intruders on both sides of the gorge, one of which has reached Drasa’s lookout post. Firing once more, a huge explosion kills the invader, sending Drasa, hurt and wounded, flying backward against the wall of her cabin as Levi continues the fight alone until barely recovered, Drasa rejoins the fight as they strafe each side of the wall until with nothing left to kill and the gorge returning to an eerie quiet, Drasa collapses on the floor.
We cut to the next morning. Levi is immediately seen keeping lookout through his sniper scope as he catches a glimpse of Drasa, her back to him and resting against the railing of her lookout post, attending to her wounds. Spotting Levi on guard and keeping track of any movement in the gorge through his sniper scope, she scribbles a simple message on her writing pad:
“BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!”
Looking through his sniper scope, Levi laughs.
Whilst The Gorge won’t be troubling my Top 10 films of 2025 (unless I watch a stream of particularly poor ones, Flight Risk last night being a prime example — dreadful film) for an hour it was a pleasing romp and an intriguing developing love story well played by Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller but…we had to descend into the gorge itself in the second half of the film and whilst it tweaked my conspiratorial muscle, it soon became an uninteresting horror story that let down the hour that came before it.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon