In Apple TV+’s The Gorge, two highly-trained operatives are assigned to guard a mysterious and impenetrable gorge from opposite sides. What starts off as a little confusing mission turns shocking when they realise what they are tasked to do and use their mental and physical powers to keep the secret contained before it’s too late.
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The Gorge Apple TV+ Director
Scott Derrickson
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The Gorge Movie Cast
Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu, William Houston
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The Gorge 2025 Writer
Zach Dean
The science fiction horror action film has a runtime of 127 minutes.
The Gorge Review
At over 2 hours, Apple TV+’s The Gorge takes its sweet time to get to the romance and the action. For a very large chunk of the initial runtime, the film is a slow and excruciating look at two people who come to learn about each other in a horribly desolate and mysterious location full of unknown monsters from “hell”. I think most viewers will find their attention floundering within the first half of the runtime, which has nothing of note other than the charming and talented pair of Teller and Taylor-Joy flirting using notepads, but that too is few and far between.
The film picks up around the 1-hour mark and gives us action and a very strange new world, giving us a glimpse into the gorge and what lies within its depths. I liked the odd, chemical-y world and the various creatures that lie within. They are the right amount of creepy and disturbing and will leave you a bit disgusted. However, the film doesn’t make an impact with the storytelling because it lacks the pacing and the punch. It’s too slow and Drasa and Levi are too bumbling to believe that they are highly trained soldiers. Although I enjoyed their more human side, I think their incompetence shows more often than not.
That being said, the film feels confusing and a bit all over the place when we finally reach the end — I found it to not have clarity on what it is trying to be because the action sequence is hardly there, and the sci-fi elements are also quite slim. It’s not particularly thrilling because most of the excitement is packed into the last hour of the runtime, making it rushed and uninteresting. The first hour is a missed opportunity that drones on and on and could’ve been condensed quite a lot to learn more about the gorge and the experiment. That part comes across as a forgettable addition and doesn’t feel like it’s the reason why we are watching the film.
Although I found Drasa and Levi’s romance as cute, because they have quite the chemistry, even that aspect feels so rushed. Isolation can make people do crazy things, but considering these two are assassins, I would assume that they are more trained than just to fall in love willy-nilly. It’s a bit jarring to watch and since it’s so rushed, we don’t feel the butterflies. Regardless, it was the only highlight of the film for me, however inconsequential it may be.
On the other hand, Sigourney Weaver’s addition to the film feels absolutely wasted — her character has nothing to it and she is just there as the token bad guy. We get no explanations, neither does the story try to create a more sinister atmosphere. The problem the gorge brings forth is solved a bit too quickly and conveniently and the cliched plot fails to make us wonder what happened to our protagonists afterward. Thus, in the end, when the film does give us any twist (which is few and far between in the first place), it all comes across as stale and unexciting.
Final Thoughts
Despite the performances, The Gorge feels half-baked and not thought out well enough to leave us on the edge of our seats. The romance is cute but it’s not enough to hold the story together. The pace is too slow for a sci-fi thriller and there just isn’t enough substance to make us love it. I guess, however, it’s fine for a one-time watch.
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