No, you belonged with me first. No, you belonged first. No, but actually, shut up for now because we have evil beings to control for reasons that are above our pay grades. Pull out your blindfolds from your top secret drawer because we've been assigned to watch over The Gorge. Levi (Miles Teller) is just a boy and an American ex-marine who's hired by a shadowy branch of the United States military, overseen by "Bartholomew" (Sigourney Weaver), to be the new guard of a watchtower at an undisclosed location. Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) is just a girl, from Lithuania to be precise, assigned to guard the neighbouring tower on the other side of the titular gorge. Both are known to be elite snipers, and they get to know each other whilst facing the aforementioned evil beings when they threaten to get out of the gorge, slowly but surely developing feelings for each other as well.
What director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter Zach Dean are mostly setting out to do with this particular film is blending together all of the various genres—sci-fi, thriller, romance, horror, action and political drama—into a dish that would satisfy all kinds of viewers equally. It's an admirable ambition for sure and even more admirable is the fact that the filmmakers kind of pull it off atmosphere-wise. The initial setup is a mixed bag as you get a little bit of uninspired characterisation and a boatload of exposition (although Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù as Levi's predecessor J.D. almost makes it seem natural, which is quite something), but also a well-devised milieu (production design by Rich Heinrichs) that invites you into this dicey situation where you know that something otherworldly is going on and that these characters will be in danger.
While the genre mashup is rather fun and there's constantly an unsettling ambience that keeps you guessing, you do end up falling out of love with these characters who are falling for each other by the time we're getting close to finding out about the secret sauce. The main reason for this is the lacklustre effort that both Teller and Taylor-Joy are bringing to the table, from Teller's line deliveries that indicate that he'd rather be anywhere else, to lack of believability in Taylor-Joy's supposedly feisty girlboss. In fact, it is extremely distracting that her entire performance in terms of body language would suggest that she's posing for a magazine cover or perfume commercial. This combination of characters that don't truly exist in this fictional world and actors simply not believing in the hokey, overly explanatory dialogue that Dean is feeding them is the real headshot that kills any momentum that an occasional thrilling scene is able to build.
Most of that momentum can be found in the middle section when we finally descend into the madness of it all. Deep down in the gorge, you get a very distinct aesthetic with some solid creature design, VFX (supervised by Erik Nordby), sets and stunts as Derrickson and co. begin to embrace survival horror mixed with action, as if the film was somehow repurposed from an unproduced pitch for an adaptation of a video game. It's also the section where the two leads are least bad, most likely because they have to actually give in to their imaginations rather than think about how they will look in still photos.
Thematically, the movie also stumbles due to the generic east-versus-west politics, unconvincing love story and writing that is boilerplate at best. Sure, it's cute to get easter eggs for 'The Queen’s Gambit' and 'Whiplash' enthusiasts, but I'm not sure how much weight that all holds when you can't identify motivations and emotions within these two main characters, let alone Weaver's Bartholomew who is diabolically one-note. Therefore, you're just left to enjoy the creature feature insanity, and composers Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor support the action with some cool synthesiser-based rumble, but that is after all just one section inside the bigger picture.
You can't help but be disappointed by the fact that this well-designed genre exercise feels so stale in the end, mostly because Teller and Taylor-Joy deliver such poor performances and their characters are so wishy-washy. Despite encountering life-threatening situations, whether they're caused by men or beasts, I didn't really care about their fates, reaction faces when the other one wasn't even able to see them or if their romance was going to have a happy ending or not. That can't be seen as anything but a missed opportunity, especially considering all the talent involved (it wouldn't be shocking if the key creatives were chosen just by looking at a recent list of award nominees in their respective categories and picking at random). Maybe in another gorge, I would've liked eliminating monsters with you more.
Smileys: Atmosphere, VFX
Frowneys: Anya Taylor-Joy, Miles Teller, dialogue
You'd think that a sniper shot would be a red flag but maybe Levi is just built different.
2.5/5
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