The Gorge

Two highly-trained military operatives are assigned to isolated towers that stand on opposite sides of a remote and highly-classified gorge. Their mission is to stand watch, protecting the world from the mysterious evil lurking within the chasm, but inevitably, their loneliness not only drives them into each other’s arms, but to uncover the truth that lies at the bottom of the misty abyss.

I’ve talked about my love of Post-Apocalyptic Forts before.

I love deliberately planned areas. I love gates and walkways and staircases and a high balcony where I can have my coffee. I love clever little set-ups with a place for everything and everything in its place, all of it specifically there for the long haul and any eventuality. I love the romance of the idea of a lonely and isolated tower rising above the dark wilderness, cold stone without, and the warmth of the hearth within, nothing to do but ponder old books, sip from a steaming mug, and mutter to myself about how winter is coming...

I love that shit.

It’s probably an extension of my desire to hide away from the world. Hermitting just doesn’t sound like such a bad idea really, especially since, at this age, up-all-night-at-the-bar Jon has been replaced by up-all-night-watching-movies Jon. Not a small amount of it is also probably about creating a small place of order against the chaos raging outside, especially in our current White Christian Fascist takeover reality. There's probably more than a bit of it that's due to the hoarder within too, right? I do really like the idea of having all my supplies stacked up, accounted for, and ready to go.

I love all that shit.

Whatever it is, if I had the money, like if I won the lottery or something, after doing some basic good in the world, this is what I’d do.

A self-sufficient, brutalist concrete structure standing in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forests and mountain wilderness, using solar and wind power, with back-up generators, your running water, outhouse, and shower needs spring-fed, or by a rain-water collection system, with big windows and a nice covered patio at the top too, not to mention a couple of 50 cals on swivel mounts? Plus, there’s a storage bunker for supplies and replacement parts? Add a library, my friend, and it sounds like heaven to me.

But, anyway...

We begin with two mercenaries.

Both are elite snipers. One is an American named Levi, a former Marine turned Private Contractor with a high kill count who’s having trouble sleeping at night. The other is a Lithuanian, working as an assassin for Russia, named Drasa. All the death is getting to her too. The pair are picked by their respective sides for an highly classified mission.

After having been sedated for the flight, then parachuting in outside of the No-Fly Zone, and having to hike the rest of the way in, Levi is met at the West Tower by a British Royal Marine he is relieving. The Marine explains about the myriad defense measures that line the rim of the gorge. There's auto-cannons, sensors, and mines, as well as scramblers to hide the gorge from overhead satellites, and it's all for one purpose… prevent the evil within the gorge from leaving, by any means necessary.

The Marine tells Levi that he doesn’t know what's down there, or how it got there, but his personal theory is that the gorge is a portal to hell, and the things that try to climb out of the gorge, the things Levi and Drasa are there to stop, are demons. Those things were named “Hollow Men” by one of their predecessors, after the T.S. Elliot poem that has the famous (and currently very relevant to America) line:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

The Marine explains that, in 1947, when the Gorge was discovered, three whole battalions, 2400 men, went down into the gorge to clear it out, but those soldiers never came out. After that, a deal was struck between the Superpowers that was so secret that, ever since, Presidents, Dictators, and Premiers alike have had no idea of the gorge’s existence, or what’s inside it, or even about the agreement that had been made to guard its misty threshold. It’s a simple deal: One sentry from NATO, and one sentry from the Eastern Bloc, for a year, they will each man a tower on the opposite sides of the gorge, standing watch at the gates of hell, and making sure that they stay closed. Then, at the end of the year, they rotate out and go home, handsomely paid, contract fulfilled.

What they don’t know, is that there’s no going home after their year is up. The gorge is a closely-guarded secret, after all, and the only way to truly keep a secret between two people is if one of them is dead. 

And so the year begins, Levi in the Western tower and Drasa in the Eastern one. For six months, they stand watch over the mysterious, mist-shrouded gorge, all alone, with no contact with the outside world, and no contact with the sentry in the opposite tower. But eventually Drasa initiates communication using written signs and binoculars, and a relationship blooms between bouts of machine-gunning the monstrous Hollow Men from scaling the gorge walls. They’re two lonely people, all alone together, so even if it means crossing the gates of hell, they’re gonna find a way to get together, do a little dance, make a little love, and get down tonight (get down tonight). It’s a bad idea, but they’re fools for love.

Chekhov’s Gorge is a narrative principle where if there’s a gorge introduced in a story, and the characters should definitely not go down into it, later on, that’s exactly what happens.

Once down there, the pair discovers that the gorge is basically the dooryard to Hell, and Hell, apparently, is a place of gross sticky vines that get goo on you, and splatter you with stuff.  Also, there’s skull-spiders. Even worse, it’s not a dry heat. There are forests down there, twisted and tortured trees tangled around skeletons, frozen as they strained at their bonds, their mouths agape in silent screams. There are also dead men in tattered uniforms, riding the ragged corpses of their horses, who prowl the mist. There’s an outpost down there as well, the remnants of a Cold War science station where things went badly, now it’s littered with the cobwebbed remains of the arrogant men and women who “delved too greedily and too deep” and awakened a monster.

That monster is capitalism and the military industrial complex.

After that, there’s the usual wild endgame of shooting and explosions and silly stunts, all ending with the true bad guys getting their appropriate comeuppance, and the good guys coming out on top. This is a narrative trope that now more than ever, even more than the monsters in this film, marks this story out as a complete fiction.

Also, as soon as the “stray dog” protocol was revealed, especially after the truth about what’s going on in the gorge was revealed, it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen, but that’s all right, because the story was fun. The action was fun. It looks good. And the two leads are pretty good together. The Gorge is light fare, but still a good time.

You know what I was actually surprised by?

There no stinger at the end of the film. There’s no “The end dot dot dot question mark” moment. I don’t think it needed one or anything, or that stingers are even a good thing, but I was shocked that there wasn’t one last “hand lunges up from the grave” moment in this film. I mean, they could still do a shitty sequel pretty easily, and probably will, but the film at least isn’t encouraging it. I liked that.

So all in all, The Gorge is good stuff.

One little thing that bothered me? That small bit about the auto-ascender felt like the result of a studio note to me.

No matter how I look at it, it just doesn’t make any sense that Levi would ask Drasa if she had one once they’re both down there, and yet he didn’t have one in his own gear, especially considering how he got down there in the first place. So, the very brief inclusion of the mention of an auto-ascender in their gear feels like the result of some jackass trying to put on their “critical response” hat, and despite coming up with nonsense—They’re not supposed to descend into the gorge, so why would they even need an auto-ascender in their gear at all—the reality probably is that this person has power over the project (the purse strings), so it gets included in the film. And all for something that could’ve just been… not mentioned at all, and no one would've thought twice about it.

So yeah, total Studio Note.

The main reason I think this is because it did what studio notes always do… which is to make the art worse, as instead of plugging a “plot hole,” all it ended up doing was to highlight the movie’s main “wait a minute…” problem.

Y'see… if the gorge is in the middle of a No-Fly zone, and as a result, the sentries have to parachute in, then hike the rest of the way to their respective towers, how the hell are they getting all the ammo, explosives, and replacement gear there?

And if the Powers That Be are simply lying about the No-Fly Zone, which they must be, not just because of the ending, but because of the way they go through mines, bullets, and fencing, means there has to be regular resupply, which means that either a helicopter has to land there, or an airdrop has to fly directly overhead, and since there is always a sentry placed there, they would certainly see this, not to mention probably be the ones responsible for putting it all away, then the question becomes… why make the sentries parachute in and walk at all?

I get why they have the sentries there, despite all the auto guns and drones, you simply have to have boots on the ground, if for no other reason than maintenance, but why lie to the sentry about the No-Fly Zone? What do they care? They work for you. Just drop them off at the door.

Plus, the idea that the sentries are apparently relying on hunting for small game and a scraggly garden to feed them for the whole year, all while they’re guarding the gates of Hell? I mean, I’m not a security expert or anything, but you’d think a more robust system would be called for.

This isn't a dealbreaker, and it's not the point of the movie, but still, what it does for me is highlight the issue of the need for resupply. You want these people, your sentries, well-fed and alert, not scrounging for shitty tomatoes, or setting snares for rabbits all day. What if the garden dies? What if game gets scarce? What if the sentires aren't eating regularly? If they can’t stand their post, then there’s no one watching the gorge. At the very least, you'd think they'd have to drop them in some MREs or something. Yes, the truth about what’s going on within the gorge is top secret, and maybe you want to tell the rest of the world that there’s a No-Fly Zone in order to keep everyone out, but why lie to the sentries about it too? I just don't get it. What's the upside? Why would the sentries care if you dropped them off ten feet from their door, even though there’s a “No-Fly” zone? Why not just tell them you have clearance... which you do, because it's YOUR No-Fly Zone. What does using the whole No-Fly Zone ruse internally buy the Powers That Be? 

It makes no sense.

Obviously, all these holes, and so many others in the whole Gorge security set-up, are there not just to set up the film's mystery box hook, which is a pretty good one honestly, but also to make it so there's just a girl, standing at one side of the Gate to Hell, holding up a sign to a boy, on the other side of the Gate to Hell, telling him that she loves him. I get that. It's just, when you’re standing on the far end of the story and you look back, you’re forced to go: “Hey… wait a minute…” and I wish the filmmakers had sat with this a little bit, and then maybe plugged up some of those holes.

And also ditched the mention of the auto-ascender.

Because on top of all that other shit I mentioned, the whole, “why didn’t they just bring an auto-ascender with them?” note is even more of a waste of time when you realize that half the gear in this sci-fi film is completely made up, so you don't have to "realistically" answer every question. The movie is about fighting monsters at a gorge that has “cloaking” devices, ignoring the question of the potential availability of proper climbing gear will not give your film a plothole big enough to sink it.

But like I said, this isn’t a deal-breaker or anything for me, it’s just… unnecessary. And weird. Also annoying. Especially as it's most likely the result of some finance bro producer dipshit wannabe flexing his power, and also showing off his climbing knowledge, because he totally does the wall at the gym, bro.

Whatever. Maybe it’s just me.

So, yeah, it’s fair to say that The Gorge has got some huge self-serving holes in its premise, and they’re there solely to make it possible for the lonely little Romeo and Juliet to be all alone, and for their love to blossom across the impossible gap of the gorge, but still… it’s fun. It looks good. It moves quickly. It’s fine. It’s more than fine actually. It’s a good time, and a good matinee choice.

Settle in with some popcorn and enjoy.