The Gorge is a new action, romance, sci-fi, and drama mash-up that is a pretty enjoyable surprise. Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller are hired guns on opposite sides of a gorge in the earth. With the terms being to stop whatever comes and don’t communicate with the person on the other side, things become complicated.

Miles and Anya’s chemistry works best when they aren’t in the same place, but it’s hard not to acknowledge they look great together. Anya is a sassy bad ass while Miles plays less of a jagoff than he usually does. Their characters get to have fun outside of the tedious and lonely tasks their situation puts them in and the tension builds as their connection grows. Even without a half hour of a dialogue, I was still entertained. There’s a loneliness aspect to each character that makes you want to care for what happens to them almost immediately .

The landscape and towers for the setting of this film are beautiful, which adds to the mystery of what might lay beneath as they explore their territory. The weapons used are awesome, the action is shot in an exciting way and the romance aspect works. This plays out more like a video game than a movie, but that was not a problem. It feels wholly original even if quite a few aspects reminded me of half a dozen other films.

If I have to be picky, they show a little too much of “what’s inside” which highlights how awful those things looked. There’s some poor design elements that ruin the surprise and said surprise is a little underplayed because of how poorly explained it was.

Outside of that, I thought this movie was mostly a good time. There’s some nice music cues in a cheesy romance/action flick where Anya is a joy.

8/10