'The Gorge' Movie Review | Apple TV+

0:00 It's a love story, baby. Just say gorge. Everyone. Well, do a bite of I'm Derek and that's Noah. And today we're talking about the Gorge. Oh, what a surprise hit for Apple TV this year, Gorge. Gorge. It's gorge. It's gorgeous. It's gorgeous, Yeah. Before we get into that, make sure you're following us. Actually, just Scroll down. If you're on the podcast or on YouTube, just Scroll down a little bit and you'll see everything there. That way you don't have to say it. Yeah, but but it's there. If you're on YouTube, just give a like and comment and subscribe and all of that. If you're on your podcast, just follow and subscribe as well.

0:42 And like, even like just ask your family members to subscribe on YouTube as well. And your dogs and cats. Yeah, if they have a YouTube that they follow, that would be really great. We're very close to what, like 1000 subscribers or something? Yeah, on YouTube. Yeah, that would be really cool. Yeah, we we dipped our toes into the YouTube game and it's like, hey, let's get there. Yeah, let's do it. Thanks friends all. Right, so spoilers ahead if you have not seen the gorge, go watch it and then we'll talk about the gorge when you come back. Also, if you haven't seen it, like don't watch anything, don't even listen to us. Don't watch any trailers go in blind. I feel like that's that's a good experience. Go into the mystery in the cloak of darkness. All right? Anyway, let us officially take a bite of the Gorge, Directed by Scott Derrickson and written by Zach Dean. Levi and Rosha have been assigned to protect opposite sides of a mysterious gorge.

1:33 They are. They are to follow strict orders for one year where they should not make contact with each other. Days turn into weeks turn into months turn to romance. However, the honeymoon ends when the Hollow Men appear. So what did you think of the gorge? How many times are we going to say gorge? I hope no more. Gorge, gorge, gorge. I like gorge in Bah, OK? You asked me a question. Oh, sorry. But when, when, when music inspiration hits, I can't let it go. There, thank you, but it's not that kind of podcast, sorry. So general initial thoughts of the Gorge. I had a great time. I think I was pleasantly surprised of the different types of genres that Scott Derrickson decided to mix into this movie.

2:22 We got horror, we got horror. Horror, it's a weird word, horror, horror, horror, no sci-fi, ROM comi, you know, survival horror, all of that stuff and a lot of action. And you know, sometimes those don't mix well, But if I had to like try to describe this movie to somebody, I would say it's like Annihilation had a ROM com baby. Like that's what this movie feels like. And it's not even just like there's like government stuff in here. There's like unique kind of organic creepy creatures in this. But then you also have like this romance in there and you have a very personal story. So I think it it it works.

3:04 I don't, I have some issues with like I guess genre Ness of it and the balance of them but overall I had a pretty good time. In Annihilation, when Natalie Portman fall in love with a Gina Rodriguez, B the sabretooth tiger Beastie thing or C the bizarre prismatic metal version of herself. Yes. All three. Yeah, why not? Good for her. Yeah. I love that she's Natalie Portman. That's. True for me. I also agree that this was an absolute delight. I really enjoyed this movie. Again, we went in with not watching any trailers or anything like that, so I was completely surprised the entire time.

3:47 I really didn't know what to expect. And I think that it just delivered on on both of those things, both the sort of romance side of it and the mystery horror, sci-fi side of it. Do I think that it's tough to blend those things together? I do, especially when there's like, you know, radioactive war testing happening, you know what I mean? Like you can't really fit romance into that. So, you know, for me it felt like in some senses they took like if movie A was a ROM com and movie B was a sci-fi mystery, then they chopped each of them into thirds and this particular movie went A/B, A/B, A/B. I do think that they, you know, punctuated each of those with. So it's like the action often turned into the romance, the romance often turned into the action. That's my one critique, but overall I really enjoyed it. Yeah, I think if we're going to kind of start with the romance of this, I think it worked really well. And from what I've seen and kind of heard is that that's the part people like the most, which is surprising because I feel like action is a really easy thing for people to consume and like. But when you start adding romance in there and horror and sci-fi, sometimes you can get muddled a little bit. But I do appreciate about this movie. I'm not sure it completely works all the way through like story wise, because I think there is some. You have to give yourself over to it a little bit. You have to be OK with him risking everything to go see her on the other side of this gorge fairly quickly. But once you do that, I think

5:19 it's fine. The romance really worked for me because I think it was a fun way to see them get to know each other. In the beginning, they're like, you're not allowed to talk to the other person on the other side. It's literally like East and West put representatives there that went right out the window, right into the gorge immediately because it's like, oh, they're hot people, of course they're going to talk to each other. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, Anya Taylor Joy has really solidified herself as a fantastic actor just and also like this doe eyed beauty. And so I get that right. It's like and. Then she looks dumb. No, I'm saying she looks like a little, a little Zo, a little Zia. And she's just always like, I'm in the woods, look at my big eyes.

6:07 And we're all like, you know, hypnotized by it. I feel like with Miles Teller, I think that he sort of solidified himself as a hunk. I I will say yeah, he. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like, right. He's an action hunk. I would say after this movie, he. Can be. I think he is on the right track to go that way. Oh, he said he's not full Hunk yet. He said if he is a Pokémon with three evolutions, he's at the middle one. Yes, Yeah. That's a good yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not in Sinner OR yet. No. He's. Like I would say Aaron Taylor Joy, Aaron Taylor Johnson more of like hunk action, you know what I mean? Like I feel like Miles Taylor hasn't done enough action maybe or big, big action movies to really say that, but I think this is a good stepping stuff.

6:54 Well, you know, if if you watch the SNL 50th anniversary when he was on Bronx Beat, he was in a Top Gun suit. You want Top Gun suit? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great I'm just saying he also did fan 4 stick so like. That was a long time ago, no? It was like 2016. Fifteen. That's not that long. 10 years. It was enough for me to remember a decade. Well, I think you're letting his past decisions color your perception of him. If I were the if I was Drasha, I would also steal his clothes to watch him run naked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm not saying he's not attractive and can't be an action star. I'm just saying he's like there because I what I think is interesting about these actors though, is that like Anya Taylor Joy is like, is she a list now? Like I can never pin it because like she is like she feels like she is, but it's like, I don't know, like is she Timothy Chalamet status?

7:48 No. And I feel like maybe if Furiosa did much better, maybe, I don't know, Like it's, it's interesting with these two actors because it's like I know of them a lot. I'd like some of the things that they're in a lot, but I never see them in enough or bigger things. I don't know. I think there's an art to being an actor and being a celebrity and not necessarily needing to be in the spotlight all the time. Fair, like Timothy Chalamet, and I don't know why we're going on this tangent, but I think that he has just decided like, I don't know, when you start dating a Kardashian, that to me feels like a very calculated move to want to be in the spotlight. Do you know what I mean? And so Anna Taylor Joy, Anya Taylor Joy. I keep wanting to call her Aaron Taylor Johnson. Anyway, isn't that so interesting ATJH anyway? You can just swap out the last name and it's fine. Wild.

8:42 But I think that she has found a really great balance of doing good work, being in great projects, but not needing to be followed by paparazzi all the time. That is very true. She, you know, she does things like the Witch and Emma and Furiosa and New Mutants. So it's like I think her filmography is kind of up and down as far as reception. But I like that she's trying a bunch of different things. And I really liked it in this. I like seeing this kind of, you know, they both of these characters suffer from PTSD and some of this isolation and just some problems in their past, right? I think that was abandoned fairly quickly for the romance and the action, which is fine. That's not what this movie is trying to do. But it is interesting that they put it out there and then was like, oh, they're fine.

9:24 Like they found each other, They're fine now. So it's like those types of things of mixing. It felt a little muddy to me, but the romance was enough to just make me forget about. It yeah, I mean, I think The thing is is that everything has to be speed up in this movie, right. So we know that they are there for a year, quote UN quote. And literally it's one of those things where it's like October now we see Christmas trees. Oh, we know it's December. So there are exactly, oh, heartbreaking, heartbreaking for the book, the book version, just a little. Bella sitting in the room. Oh my gosh, you're so. Impressed possibilities. Oh my God, I'm feeling my twilight. This is Twilight. 20 years. OK?

10:08 Anyway, sorry a lot of tangents. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, I think that the romance part, we had to be willing to put ourselves over into this kind of high speed timeline because we just didn't have the time in the movie to really sit with them. I didn't enjoy the kind of falling in love montage. Right. So they're communicating to each other through. He has a whiteboard. She has an endless supply of large notebooks and Sharpie markers, which is really impressive. I like how you that's like the one thing that you're like, this is unbelievable. She there's no way they she was writing so big on those pages. She was not saving any room for error no. I mean, they were playing well to get to my point, right is one of the things that I thought was kind of cheeky fun was that us as the audience members they made in this courting process, they made a nod to each of their well known works, right?

10:56 So they play chess together. She had enough paper to write every move on a page. Yeah, which is OK. His was a little more believable. They gave him enough markers and just the one whiteboard which I appreciated. But no whiteboard cleaner. That's true. Just his hand or his arm or something. But, and then of course, the nod to Whiplash for him is that they find pots and pans and empty drums, buckets where they can play drums together across the gorge. Which was such an insane move to do. I'm telling you, it's so funny that in a movie that has beings other, you know, I won't say otherworldly, but just scary beings living in a gorge.

11:37 The part that I find most unbelievable is the drums and the amount of paper that she has. Yeah, it's ridiculous. There's literally trees that can eat people and skull spiders, and that's the unbelievable part. They got me with them skull spiders, let me tell you. And those. Trees I thought I thought that was really fun I'm glad that they went with whiplash because that's I think arguably his most successful and well known movie It's a fantastic movie fantastic. Not fan 4 stick thank God and Queen's gambit right. I think that's like, generally those are what audiences are going to put them with. Yeah, I, I think the the romance was fun. And you know why? Why he said it was kind of romcom is because you get those moments of like, playing the drums, playing chess like that, shooting bottles from afar.

12:22 But then, like, when he risks everything to go across this gorge, he has a bouquet of flowers. It's like but. OK, but let's. It's charming, but it is wrong. Commie. Yeah, I fine I. Think we need to take these two characters into account, right? So Joshua is, is, is carrying around the guilt of murdering lots and lots of people, right? And so she wants to be free of that. Levi on the other hand, interesting, he has no one and here she is across the gorge. Wouldn't you shoot a rocket across the gorge to then be able to zip line across the way for your love? I don't know. This is a lot of work. What they could have done is just been like, hey, oh, I guess no, because then we want to have the movie because JD, the guy that what is his name Levi replaced, got killed when he left.

13:14 I was going to say like, meet me here when we leave. When it happened. I know, but like that was a lot of work just to be like, I don't know if you'll like me. Nothing else to do. I know, I know it's. It's it's a very interesting version of texting someone you have a crush on, right, right. And when you finally meet? Yeah, I I do like how ultimately towards the end, it did bring it back to the romance of like, this is what they were fighting for, right? How did you feel about the other half of that movie? How did you feel about The Holloman? How did you feel about the Gorge? So I liked, I like discovering everything that was going along, going on along with our characters. We didn't know what they were going to look like. We didn't know what was going on. I thought that the gorge piece really was intense. There was like probably a good 30-40 minute chunk of this movie that was just action set after action set after action set. You know, once he's leaving Josh's side of the gorge, that's when he falls in a bomb goes off and the zip line gets cut. So then she pops on a parachute, dives right in. She's Joshua.

14:18 OK, She's not afraid. She's ready, he's ready to go. She said anything. I collapse the sky. I will come for you. I can do anything for love but. I will do that. But I will do that. And so there, there were pieces in this, there were jump scares that got me in this. I would say two or three times, I yelled. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there this I think specifically when the big hollow men action set piece when they were coming up the sides, which I think is such a cool way to do stakes in action in this movie. When it finally gets on Josh's side and like the hand comes up, it got me because like, I like what Derek, Derek Scott Dicker, Derrickson, there's too many derricks in my head right now.

15:02 I like what they did with the the jump scares. It was off a beat, you know, like you're you're anticipating a jump scare and you're like, oh, it's going to happen. But like it happened a little sooner and that happened multiple times in this movie. I like that. I like when they mess with your expectations because the whole point of a jump scare is you're anticipating it and that's part of the the fun and the horror of it. But when you turn that on its head or just mess with that a little bit. Very effective and I also think when you are spending a lot of time in the ROM com portion of it watching them fall in love and then something scary happens, it feels even more intense. You got too comfortable, yes. Exactly, and then they flip the table over. That's what I that's what I think is a strength of this movie is it did it quite a bit.

15:48 It kept reminding you that like they're trying to survive, they're trying to fight for this thing for each other, but then they kept amping it up. I think the pacing for this movie is really well done. It's just a little over two hours and when I first saw that runtime, I was like, OK guys, I think we needed it. I think we needed to get to know them to really be comfortable in that romance, and then to get all of this other like survival Ness of it. The Gorge itself, when I think about like the organization, Black Lake and Sigourney Weaver and all of that stuff, I could care less. I don't think that really worked for me because it was what it was. There's nothing new going on there. Government protecting the secret. OK, Like, you know, like, that's OK.

16:30 That's all I need to know. What I liked was the survival, was the horror, was the hollow man. That's what I liked. Yeah, the Hollow Man had a really interesting design. You know, they are biologically based, but pet part plant, part human, and I think they have. So this entire town is taking over, which includes horses. And so it kind of gave me green night. Just in the way it looks. Yeah, in. The way that they were designed and I think that there were so many sort of twisted creatures and plants and human esque things that it each time they ran into something it was sort of a new surprise. It wasn't like they were running just from the same thing over and over again.

17:14 It was like a new creature had come out to kill them and we were like especially like those skull spiders. That was insane. Yeah, it was really cool. Very scary and the fact how? What did you think of the actual part of them uncovering the mystery of the gorge? Again, fine. I think it was very predictable, which is fine. I don't think this movie is trying to win an Oscar or anything like that. I think sometimes it's fine to just have a movie that's like, oh, this is fun. Like I would watch it again if it just happened to be on or like, oh, do you want to watch something just to like, I don't know, like have something silly or whatever, like. I feel like if we were getting together with our families, we'd be like, oh, did you guys see the gorge? And if they didn't, we'd watch it again with them, right? Right.

17:55 Yeah. So because it's not, it's not crazy. It's not anything that anybody couldn't follow. You know, I thought, I thought it was fine. I think we needed some of those answers because if we didn't get like the video of the woman showing, like you have 5 days and you know, the mutation and all of that, I think we would have had a little too many questions at the end. It answered all of them. I think we can like think ahead of like, oh, of course they were trying to use this to create super soldiers. It's always super soldiers. I mean, it always is. Yeah. I I did think the part of them by so so there was this like post World War testing facility that then later gets taken over by Black Lake, right, to try and make these super soldiers. But it is funny to me that the people that came in to do all this testing later, more in a more modern era, left the projector set up with the film that told us exactly what we needed to know about what was going on there. Yeah.

18:55 And they also left the freaking atomic bomb still ready. Willing to go project Stray dog. Stray dog. Just press the button, you're good. That's called JIC. Just in case. Just in case stupid need to explode it. Yeah, but it was I think like action wise and stuff like both of these, you know, Miles Teller and Anya Taylor Joy, fantastic in action. I think they like, they do such a strong job of selling that. And I like that they kept reminding us that like they're doing it for each other, they're doing to survive. So I think it did it well. I do think that some of the storylines and themes were abandoned to service some of the more I guess just crowd pleasy things. But yeah, I think I think it worked. I think the horror Ness of it worked well for me. Did you have a favorite action piece in the Gorge? I liked when Joshua got kidnapped and she had to fight the guy off while kind of tied up. I thought that was really cool.

19:54 That really showed because also when she was getting dragged, yeah, like she just getting. He bumped around those trees and stuff. I was like, no, thank you. But it was they didn't hesitate. Like they made you flinch a little bit with that stuff, which I appreciated. Like if you're going to do some of these genres, you have to sell it. You have to go all the way and you can't just like make the action kind of there, but just focus on the romance. You need to do both of them. Yeah, he was going to cook her. Yeah, what about you? He's going to eat her. I so I loved all the stuff in the gorge. The part that I think I felt I was most on edge for was the Jeep going up the Cliff. So this Jeep is just dangling from this one wire and just tons and tons of Holloman are coming to try and get them.

20:40 And so it's just back forth, back forth. Who's going to fall? Is someone going to fall? What's going to happen? You know? And luckily, they do finally make it out. Sheesh. You know, that was scary. But that part got me. Yeah. I think overall, if we're going to kind of go more towards the end of the movie, right, I think them killing Sigourney Weaver because she didn't care about them anyway. How many? How many soldiers did she kill? How many people did she kill? A lot, yeah. It would have to be a lot. She's evil. I mean, and the Holloman are just the battalion that went down there in the 1st place to try to. So there's a bunch of people down there. I do think that them trying to find each other at the end and getting a very like Batman, The Dark Knight Rises, like Alfred seeing Bruce across the way in Paris and being like, I think that was kind of silly. But again, plays into the romance tropes that I liked. And a lot of times we don't get happy endings for this movie or these types of movies.

21:36 So I can't say I hated it, but I was like, hey, OK. I think I would have been fully disappointed if that didn't happen. I needed both of them to survive. I wanted them to meet up at the end. I think it would have been upsetting if only one of them survived and the other one didn't. I do like that they left it up to chance and just trusting the other person will eventually find them. I, I mean, I knew it. There's, I mean, they're trained soldiers. Of course Levi was going to find her. Well, can I give him one of my biggest grievances with this movie? Absolutely. I wanted to know what the poem was. We never found out what the poem was. She read it because he he gave her the poem, right? She collapsed the sky or night. She claps the night and he was like, if I don't show up, read this at sunset or whatever where they were supposed to meet. So she does.

22:25 You see like the first couple lines and then that was it. I'm like, wait, no voice over. Like, are we? I'll tell you what, it was enough to make our strong Josh a cry. Though I I wanted to cry. Give me the poem. Give. Me the poem. They made it such like a point in the movie too, and I was like, oh man, that's. Right, I think we forgot to mention that he's a poet. I didn't really want to because we didn't get to see the poetry. But he was always just, you know, very intensely writing in that notebook. Maybe she cried because it was really bad. She was like, this is what I was waiting. For yeah, night flight Kite, you know, he just rhymed like that, Yeah. It was a simple rhyme scheme. Yeah, the Iampic pantameter was off. And that's why when she saw him, she was like, oh God, I just became a waiter.

23:12 Great, he's back. No, I'm just kidding. No, she was so excited to see Levi sitting there. So do you think that it worked overall for you? I totally OK, I really do. I I just think, you know, I especially for something that's over two hours, you know, with all with really, I mean, this cast was very. Small, very small cast. I mean, I would say there's all those security Weaver and there's all these soldiers and stuff. It was a it was a cast of two, Yeah. So for for two people to carry a 2 hour movie, I just thought the pacing was good. I thought the blend was good. And I think that it's just fully enjoyable. Yeah, I want more stuff like this. You know, I don't know, like I think Scott Derrickson is on the right track with some of these movies. You know, he did Doctor Strange and I think he has Black Phone 2 coming out as well.

24:00 So he's he's doing a lot of cool stuff. So I'm excited to see what he does outside of sequels and stuff, but what's fun about this, or also could be a bad thing, is that it does leave it open for a potential sequel in some type of way. So who knows, maybe we'll see that. I guess if they can make a movie like the A Quiet Place into multiple films. Annihilation. Yeah, Yeah. They can make the gorge into a couple films now. Uh oh. Stray dog didn't take care of everyone. Now it's gotten out into wherever. Yeah, and I think that it then it becomes like hard because are we going to have another romance? Probably not, because then it's just going to be the same movie over again. So babies. Yeah, babies.

24:41 Babies No Flat. Babies. Oh no. Yeah, so I, I really enjoyed it. Enjoyed it. So let us know what you thought of the gorge. Did you think it was gorgeous God, or did you think it was an A? Gorgeous A. Group A Gree that's. What I was trying to do egregious A gorgeous A gorgeous, Yeah. It still sounds like gorgeous, all right. We'll come up with a second one, but did you think it was good or? Bad. All right, till next time, bye.