Reseñas de la crítica

Derrickson’s romantic-action-horror-political thriller manages to be all of those genres at once without feeling disjointed... [The director] harmoniously balances the shifts in tone to deliver a truly thrilling genre hybrid.

The Gorge does some mildly creative genre-mixing that at least makes for occasionally unexpected moments... But after a certain suspenseful though absurd point... it’s pretty much derivative action-oriented chase scenes all the way. The movie gets more rote as you start to recognize borrowings from other, much better films like Alien (1979), 28 Days Later (2002), and Annihilation (2018).

The real big reveal is that despite looking like it was based on a video game that your younger brother obsessively plays, The Gorge is in fact an original, or whatever that word means when the plot and aesthetic feel like they’ve been stitched together from so many other films.

Not every movie needs a twist, and The Gorge’s shoehorned-in one raises more questions than it answers in favor of a flimsy attempt at adding new stakes to its drama or perhaps to add extra mystery to a premise that doesn’t allow for much.

[The Gorge] supplies a novel science-fiction premise and some captivating bursts of suspense. There was potential for this mysterious action romp to be something more special – a keeper, even. But we’ll take what we can get: at least it’s one of the grabbier films to land on Apple TV+ this side of the pandemic.

For all the elaborate weaponry, production design and (eventually) frantic action offered here, this movie crackles most as a lively pas de deux between Taylor-Joy and Teller, who commendably take their material seriously no matter how seriously ridiculous it gets.

The spirit of the drive-in is strong in this trashy mash-up, though it’s best appreciated as an unlikely romance, where love and poetry somehow blossom amid heavy gunfire and monster rampages.

There’s something impressive about seeing two actors establish chemistry through calibrated facial expressions and body language. Taylor-Joy, with her aspirational Eastern European accent, and Teller are both fine in their roles, reveling in the humor of two people who can see each other but not speak.

Once you find out what’s really happening, and why this area has been such a well-kept secret, you can feel the oxygen get sucked out of the proceedings with alarming speed... It’s a pity, but because for the first half of The Gorge, you find yourself leaning in to see what these resourceful soldiers will do next, how they’ll bridge the literal and figurative gap between them.

If only the ultimate truth of the Gorge were even half as evocative as the metaphor that Zach Dean’s script uses to describe it, perhaps the movie that shares its name wouldn’t feel so destined to spend the rest of eternity in an afterlife more inescapable than hell itself: the abyssal bowels of a tech company’s streaming library.

For a solid hour or so, the film is patient and tense, with just the right touches of levity and romance. Until, suddenly, it isn’t... This is still a horror film where frightening bioorganic mutants have come to rip people to shreds, and that feels like the least interesting place for it to have gone after the setup.

The Gorge boasts a creepy premise and plenty of potential. But as that premise reveals an increasingly familiar story and setting, it’s hard to shake the feeling that filmmaker Scott Derrickson is serving mainly as a hired hand.