The Gorge (2025)

Two elite snipers are stationed on opposite rims of a hidden canyon and instructed not to speak to each other for a year. This is the entire premise of The Gorge, and it holds for roughly forty minutes before the film remembers it is also a creature feature. Scott Derrickson stages the long-distance courtship with real patience: chess games played across the void, a sharpshooting contest, improvised drums. The romance works. Then the Hollow Men climb out of the hole and the picture becomes a run-and-shoot exercise scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which is a trade most viewers will accept without complaint.

The cast is more diverse than the genre typically bothers with. Sope Dirisu and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith appear in supporting roles, and Anya Taylor-Joy, born in London to an Argentine father, carries the female lead. The film says nothing about any of this, which is its own kind of quiet. Drasa is a competent operative who matches Levi shot for shot, and the screenplay treats her competence as a baseline requirement of the job instead of a statement. Sigourney Weaver's Bartholomew runs a private defense contractor harvesting mutant samples for profit, so there is a corporation to hiss at, though the critique extends no further than the standard genre reflex of distrusting men in lanyards. Levi has nightmares. The film shows them and moves on.

There is no romance between women, no environmental subplot, no reckoning with history, no meditation on bodies or minds. The film wants to be a love story with monsters in it, and it succeeds at exactly that, which is a modest achievement and an honest one. It lectures no one. In 2025, that restraint reads as almost eccentric.