The Gap and 'The Gorge'

What if you were told to go to the middle of the forest and stare at a hole for a year? A hole you’re not sure what is down there, but a hole, nevertheless. You have food, water, shelter, books, a distant friend way over the way, and many, many guns. It sounds like one of those strange riddles you’d find on the back of an odd menu, ones that you’re sure there’s a definitive answer to, that you just can’t place your finger on. For Scott Derrickson andThe Gorge, Apple TV’s latest, there’s only one place to point your finger, and it’s not down – it’s to the other side.

Levi Kane (Miles Teller) and Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) are elite snipers assigned to guard and watch over the gorge for a year, a mysterious pit about which they’re told nothing. The two quickly run out of things to do and look to each other for entertainment and companionship. Trouble is, there’s a crater football stadium-sized gap between the two of them, and they must figure out how to pass the time, and what is truly going on in the gorge.

If you were thinking that sounds like Sleepless in Seattle meets Annihilation you’d be completely correct. This gloriously designed genre piece is part romance, heavy on the sci-fi, with a bit of musical flair and a sprinkling of horror and thriller, as you’d expect from Derrickson. It’s all and much too much, at least for any other movie. The sparse plotting and loose narrative hang hold onto the genres like a zip line onto which they zoom, jump and shoot around, leading to a movie that seemingly never sits still despite not moving anywhere.

Not all is great in Gorge town though as this massively budgeted scorcher of a romantic sci-fi didn’t get a theatrical release, something Apple are usually pretty good at. With Love Hurts and Heart Eyes out right now couples are chomping at the bit for something with a little more leaf on the bones. There’s nothing more bittersweet this Valentine's, especially for those in long-distance relationships, than watching two of our best working actors stare longingly at each other through binoculars.

Truthfully, Anya Taylor Joy and Miles Teller are why the movie works at all. For large chunks, it is just them on screen and they sell the lovey-dovey eyes superbly. Joy is especially a Joy (sorry), as she slowly opens up to Teller, becoming the heart of the movie that’s trying to dig its way into her counterpart's chiselled heart. When they inevitably fall into the titular gorge and encounter weird half-insect-plant people it’s only because they’ve sold us on their longing so well that we care. Then they start driving up the side of a mountain (assumedly not a reference to Furiosa, but it just seems too perfect not to be), only hanging on by the end of a zip line, staring into each other’s eyes and the movie crescendos into a gorgeous romantic opera, the likes of which T.S Elliot would love.

Sure, the movie ends a little cliché, though sometimes all you need when all is said and done is a boy and a girl and a gap. When they finally meet, when they finally touch? That’s what it’s all about.