Two soldiers, Levi and Drasa, are stationed at guard towers on opposite sides of a deep canyon called "The Gorge" Their job is to watch the gorge and make sure nothing dangerous escapes from it. They're not supposed to talk to each other, but they're both lonely and isolated.
Levi is an American Marine with PTSD who suffers from nightmares about his past missions. He's recruited by a mysterious woman named Bartholomew who gives him very specific instructions but won't tell him what's actually in the gorge. Drasa is a Lithuanian sniper who works as a covert operative, often employed by the Kremlin. She's dealing with her own personal tragedy - her terminally ill father Erikas, who has planned to die by suicide on Valentine's Day.
When Levi arrives at his tower, he relieves his predecessor 'J.D', a former British Royal Marine corporal. 'J.D' explains that the location is kept completely hidden by powerful cloaking antennas that make it invisible to satellites and aircraft. The towers are heavily armed and designed to contain monstrous creatures within the gorge, which he calls "The Hollow Men", J.D warns Levi about something called "Straydog" an unknown emergency protocol that he doesn't fully understand. He also tells him that back in the late 1940s, large troops of soldiers were sent into the gorge during some kind of military operation, and none of them ever returned.
J.D gets killed, he thinks he's being taken away to safety after completing his duty, but instead, Bartholomew's people kill him on her orders. This shows Levi that this isn't a normal military assignment and that the people running this operation don't care about the guards' lives.
Despite being forbidden from communicating, Levi and Drasa start noticing each other across the canyon. They begin with simple hand signals and waves, then progress to holding up written notes and messages. Over weeks and months, they develop an elaborate system of communication. They start sharing personal details about their lives, their fears, and their dreams. The isolation and danger of their situation creates an intense bond between them, and they eventually fall in love despite never meeting face-to-face or even hearing each other's voices.
The romance develops slowly and naturally. They learn each other's routines, they comfort each other during difficult moments, and they find ways to show affection across the impossible distance. Levi learns about Drasa's dying father and tries to support her through that pain. Drasa sees Levi's PTSD episodes and helps him feel less alone with his trauma.
One night, driven by his feelings for Drasa and unable to bear the separation any longer, Levi decides to break the rules. He sets up a zipline between the towers and slides across the gorge to spend time with Drasa in person. For the first time, they can actually touch and talk to each other. It's an incredibly romantic and emotional moment after all those months of distant communication.
But their happiness is short-lived. While they're together in Drasa's tower, the creatures from the gorge launch a coordinated attack. These aren't mindless monsters - they're organized and intelligent enough to plan an assault on both towers simultaneously. During the chaos of the attack, as Levi and Drasa fight to defend themselves, they both fall into the gorge. The fall should have killed them, but they somehow survive the drop into the depths.
Inside the gorge, they discover it's like a horrific underground ecosystem. The gorge is filled with what look like plant-zombie hybrid creatures - the "hollow men" that J.D had warned about. These creatures were once human soldiers, the battalions that were sent down in the 1940s, but they've been transformed by some kind of biological experiment or contamination. They're partially plant-like, with vines and roots growing through their bodies, but they retain enough human intelligence to be truly terrifying.
As Levi and Drasa explore the gorge trying to find a way out, they piece together the dark history of the place. They find evidence that this was a secret government testing ground for biological weapons. The experiments went wrong, creating these hybrid creatures that are neither fully alive nor dead. The creatures can't be killed by conventional weapons because of their plant-like regenerative abilities.
These two lovers must work together to survive in this nightmare, fighting their way through hordes of these creatures while being hunted by the more intelligent ones. They discover that the creatures are trying to escape the gorge, which is why the towers and guards exist - not to keep people out, but to keep the monsters in.
They learn that the evil corporation behind the experiments has been using the gorge as an ongoing testing ground, sending down new subjects periodically to see how the biological agents affect different people. Levi and Drasa realize they were never meant to be guards - they were meant to be the next test subjects, thrown into the gorge when the corporation was ready for the next phase of experiments.
In the climactic battle, they face off against the most evolved of the creatures - perhaps the original scientists or military leaders who were transformed decades ago and have retained the most human intelligence while gaining plant-like powers. Using their combined military training and the weapons they've scavenged, they manage to defeat the monsters and find a way to escape the gorge.
In the end, they not only escape together but also expose the corporation's evil experiments, ensuring that no one else will be sent to guard the gorge or be used as test subjects. They've survived both the physical horrors of the creatures and the emotional trauma of discovering they were being used as expendable pawns in a larger conspiracy.
"The Gorge" is a movie that can't decide what it wants to be, and that's its biggest problem. It starts as an interesting love story between two isolated guards, then becomes a generic monster movie, then tries to be an action thriller. None of these elements work well together.
The first part is actually pretty good – watching Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy communicate across the canyon without words is genuinely romantic and touching. Both actors have great chemistry, and you believe they could fall in love in this unusual situation.
But once they fall into the gorge, everything falls apart. The plant-zombie monsters look silly and aren't scary. The corporate villain plot is boring and predictable – we've seen this "evil company does experiments" story a million times before. The action scenes are okay but nothing special.
The movie's biggest mistake is probably explaining too much. The gorge was mysterious and interesting when we didn't know what was down there. Once we learn it's just another bioweapons experiment, it becomes boring. Sometimes mystery is better than answers.
Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy do their best with the material, but the script gives them cheesy dialogue and forces their characters to make stupid decisions. The romance feels rushed – they fall deeply in love after just a few days of waving at each other.
The Gorge concludes with Levi and Drasa successfully escaping the nightmare after activating "Stray Dog" a nuclear self-destruct protocol that obliterates the entire facility and its monstrous inhabitants. The duo outsmarts villain Bartholomew (Sigourney Weaver) and her Dark Lake corporation, which had been harvesting hybrid DNA from the contaminated creatures to create super soldiers. After a 5 day quarantine period to ensure they weren't infected, both lovers reunite at a French cafe for their happily ever after ending. However, since Dark Lake was a larger organization with corporate interests beyond just this one gorge, there's clear sequel potential exploring other contaminated sites or surviving Dark Lake operators seeking revenge. Given that The Gorge became Apple TV+'s biggest movie launch ever, the streaming giant likely will develop a direct sequel following Levi and Drasa's new life in hiding or a prequel exploring the original WWII experiments, or a spinoff featuring other Dark Lake facilities around the world.
The ending is particularly disappointing. After all the buildup about sacrifice and duty, everything gets resolved with a typical action movie finale where the good guys win and get to be together. It's safe and predictable.
It's not terrible, the suspense is good, many people still love it as a generic sci-fi, but it's a wasted opportunity with good actors and an interesting premise.
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