What do you get when you combine the genres of action, drama, horror, romance, and science fiction?  Do not bother to figure it out (if you have not done so already), I will tell you: you get The Gorge.  That sounds like a recipe for disaster, and the movie teeters on the edge of that disaster cliff, flirting with going over it at several points.  You will soon see why this metaphor is appropriate.  It is almost cast into the abyss every time it changes tone between the imperatives the different styles demand.  One moment the two main characters are falling in love, the next they are fighting monsters, only to be quickly replaced by uncovering a large-scale genetic mutation plot, and finally they are driving a half-track jeep up the side of a cliff.  As a Catholic reviewer, the least I can say is that one scene takes place inside a church.  As for the rest, there is no other place to start than at the beginning.

The Gorge begins with Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy), a Lithuania sniper for hire.  Upon completing an assassination mission, she returns to her dying father, Erikas (William Houston).  He informs her that the Russians have a new mission for her. Drasa is not keen to take it because of the state of Erikas and the employer’s nation, but her father encourages her to do so even though it will be a long one and he will be dead before it is over.  On the other side of the world is Levi Kane (Miles Teller), a recently United States Marine Corps (USMC) Scout/Sniper that is about to get a similar call from what he believes to be his own government.  When he meets Bartholomew (Sigourney Weaver) at Camp Pendelton, he assumes she works for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  She has a job tailor made for him, needing somebody with his skills, no attachments, and time on his hands.  He accepts and is airdropped into an unknown part of the world.  Once on the ground, he hikes to the eponymous geographical feature where he is met by J.D. (Sope Dirisu), a British soldier he is replacing after spending a year at this location.  Before departing, J.D. gives Levi a briefing on the duties to be performed over the next turn of the calendar.  They involve walking along the edge of the gorge, maintaining equipment, checking in once a month by radio, and killing anything that attempts to rise from below.  Adding to the mystery, the Brit describes these creatures as “Hollow Men,” which is a nod to a poem by T.S. Eliot.  They are half-human, half-tree, and all violent.  During World War II, something had happened in this place that has caused representatives from East and West to send armed people to guard it.  With the proper information exchanged, J.D. leaves, but is murdered by the people in the helicopter who had come to take him home.  Levi is not aware of this as he settles into his tower to watch.  Despite being told that he is to have nothing to do with his counterpart on the other side, he notices the other person’s routine.  To save you some trouble, it is Drasa, and they begin communicating with each other on her birthday by writing notes that they view on binoculars.  Their first interaction also involves their introduction to the Hollow Men as a group of them attempt to scale either side of the canyon.  They help each other kill the creatures, and soon their curiosity gets the better of them. Levi rigs a rope to go across the chasm, and he ziplines to Drasa’s side.  They spend a romantic night together.  In the morning, he goes to return to his side, but the rope snaps on the way.  Luckily (or conveniently) he is wearing a parachute, deploying it on the way down.  She finds her own parachute and goes after him.  What they discover on the bottom is otherworldly.  In addition to having to defend themselves from the Hallow Men, the flora and fauna are also out to get them.  Walking along the valley, they come to a long-deserted village with the flags of Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States flying over it.  The refuge they seek in a church turns out to be (sadly) untenable, and eventually they find a door in the rock face.  Inside is a laboratory, with a miraculously still functioning film projector that discusses what went on here.  It has something to do with genetic mutations and poisoned air, immediately making them wonder if they are infected.  On an equally miraculous note is the functioning computer, on which they learn that this is being done by a private corporation trying to create super soldiers.  Deciding that they need to do something about this awful place, their next move is to try to figure out an escape.  This brings me to my favorite part.  Finding a World War II-era half-track jeep, they manage to make it to where Levi’s rope had snapped and tie the vehicle’s winch to it.  From there, it is a vertical ascent up the cliff-side . . . in a car.  When they do make it to the top, they make their plans to use the atomic bomb left there as a failsafe (I guess?) to destroy the facility.  They also intend to quarantine for five days, but Bartholomew makes this impossible when she comes to kill the two soldiers, knowing that they have uncovered all her company’s secrets.  Still, this is not entirely unexpected, and they set off the chain events to lead to the nuclear blast.  Levi is late in getting to their rendezvous since he had been injured, but he eventually finds her working in a seaside restaurant.  And I suppose they live happily ever after.

You have to say Drasa and Levi live happily ever after at the end of The Gorge because it has the classic romance conclusion.  I am sort of okay with this because, despite the silliness I underscored, I cared about the characters.  It is just hard to square how it turns out with the path it takes to get to the final moment.  I am all for two people falling in love, and doing so under difficult circumstances is fine, but this is something different.  Adding to the potential confusion are the bits of poetry, some of it from well-known sources, others penned by Levi.  I appreciated this to a certain degree, though I can see how another viewer might look at it as yet another complication for the story.  All the same, there are some tidbits in it that I can use to talk about from a Catholic perspective.  An interesting one basically says that only those willing to risk going too far can ever find out how far they can go.  It sounds somewhat like a fortune cookie saying, and being the square I am, I thought about the potential pitfalls of doing anything “too far.”  Yet, it can also be taken to mean that one needs to rely fully on God.  So many fear doing so for a variety of reasons, be it not wanting to hand over control to the unknown or because of their unbelief.  Whatever the case, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of trusting in God.  In other words, like we see in the movie, you have to take that proverbial “Leap of Faith.”  Drasa and Levi do this for each other, confident that ropes will hold or parachutes will open, because what is waiting for them on the other side is worth it.  It is love.  Since God is love, and God is everything, what better reason is there for trusting in Him when you consider the rewards?

One of the rewards Levi is looking for in The Gorge is truth.  God is truth, though the movie does not talk about the Divine, aside from referring to the bottom of the abyss as the opposite.  The truth of the movie is that it is a strange one, and I am not sure how I feel about it.  It had me rolling my eyes more than a few times, but I appreciated the happy ending.  So . . . yeah, there you go.