Okay. I need to go outside. Or at least open a window. I just spent two hours in a dark, foggy gorge with two people I’ve never met and now my living room feels too small and too quiet. My brain feels… scraped clean. In a good way? I think so.
So I just finished *The Gorge* on Apple TV+. And look, I know my TV is decent, but whatever they did to the cinematography in this thing… it was made for 4K HDR. The blacks were so deep they felt like they were swallowing the light from my lamps. I was curled up under a blanket on the couch, basically a human burrito, and I still felt a chill. The fog. My god, the fog. It wasn’t just weather; it was a character. It was breathing.
You know the setup. Two elite snipers, one in a tower on the east side, one on the west. Levi and Drasa. They’re supposed to watch this… thing. This mystery in the middle. And they can’t talk. At first. Just these little messages on a pad. I was hooked immediately. The loneliness was so palpable I could almost taste it. It reminded me of that time I went hiking by myself up in the mountains and took a wrong turn and didn't see another person for like, six hours. The sun was starting to go down and every snapped twig sounded like a footstep and I just remember thinking, "Wow, it's really easy to disappear out here." I didn't actually disappear, obviously, I found the trail again, but that feeling… that's the first hour of this movie.
There’s this one moment. It’s not a big action scene. It’s just Drasa on the zipline, going over to Levi’s tower for the first time. The camera is behind her, and you just see this vast, impossible expanse of fog and rock below, and her tiny figure just… gliding across it. The wind is whipping her hair. I was literally holding my breath. My hands were clenched into fists under my blanket. It was so beautiful and so terrifying all at once. That shot is going to be stuck in my head for weeks. It’s the whole movie right there: this incredible, dangerous beauty.
And their connection… I was so invested. I thought their slow-burn romance, built entirely on little gestures and shared silences, was the absolute heart of the whole thing. But now that I’m sitting here, the credits rolling, my dog looking at me like I’m crazy… was it actually kind of cheesy? I mean, of course they’re going to fall for each other, they’re the only two people for a thousand miles. Was it genuine connection or just extreme proximity and boredom? I don't know. I'm questioning it. I want to believe it was real. My heart wants to believe it.
And then the second half happens. And the floor just drops out from under you. I won’t spoil it, but… it goes there. It goes SO there. I actually jumped. Full-body flinch, spilling a little of my tea on the couch. My dog, Buster, shot up and started barking at the TV. It was chaos. It goes from this quiet, tense psychological thriller to a full-blown survival horror monster movie and it does not stop. The whiplash is insane. But it works? I think it works? It’s like the movie is holding your hand, whispering a sweet secret, and then just screaming in your face for forty-five minutes.
Honestly, watching it at home felt right. I could pause it after a particularly intense scene and just walk around my apartment for a minute, touch a real wall, look out my window at the quiet street. I needed those little reality checks. If I’d seen that in a theater I think I would have had a panic attack. The sound design alone, coming through my speakers, was enough to make my heart hammer against my ribs.
I feel exhausted. Like I was the one crawling through the mud and fighting for my life. It’s a weird, beautiful, messy, terrifying movie. It’s two different movies stapled together and I think I love both of them. I think.
Okay. I need to go hug my dog.
8.5/10.
-Alex
Trailer English - https://youtu.be/rUSdnuOLebE?si=FFz_a0wATsYsf5eN
Review English - https://youtu.be/6TtskBo69as?si=w_jVLoU8JAhvRX8Z
Review Hindi - https://youtu.be/gfJ3C_UIkOA?si=Pz5Va29XxZUbXdXj
EXPLANATION english - https://youtu.be/L_QOlcPIvOA?si=1PhvU--3jJ8SvFgS
EXPLANATION hindi - https://youtu.be/VBxGz84Ij90?si=JVwnLVBWYk31Fsaz
