Scott Derrickson is a director whose name is synonymous with horror thanks to the amount of genre credits on his CV. Whilst he has dabbled in high-profile movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and Marvel's Doctor Strange, Derrickson has become a modern master of fright. After impressing with The Exorcism of Emily Rose, it was Derrickson's Sinister that had audiences clawing onto their seats. More recent work has seen him once more embracing his horror side with both his segment in V/H/S/85 and adaptation of Joe Hill's short story, The Black Phone, receiving rapturous praise. Now though, Scott Derrickson has debuted a very different film, The Gorge, which is a fantastic fusion of several well-loved genres.
Starring both Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, The Gorge joins highly-trained operatives Levi (Teller) and Drasa (Taylor-Joy) who are appointed to posts in guard towers on opposite sides of a vast and highly classified gorge in order to protect the world from an undisclosed and mysterious evil that lurks within. They bond from a distance while trying to stay vigilant in defending against an unseen enemy. When the cataclysmic threat to humanity is revealed to them, they must work together in a test of both their physical and mental strength to keep the secret in the gorge before it's too late.
The Gorge is available to watch on Apple TV and is a must-see for those that enjoy sweeping romance, video-game-style carnage, and shadowy conspiracy thrillers. Most importantly, The Gorge is a film that exists outside of any existing IP, making it a rare unique diamond in a sea of carbon copies. Ahead of the release of the film, FILMHOUNDS was able to speak with Scott Derrickson about what drew him to the project, making the most of his cast, the hidden messages within the architecture, and having aged out of video games.
The Gorge is one of those stories that traverses many genres. As someone primarily known for working in horror, was it the opportunity to play in all these other sandboxes simultaneously that appealed to you when you read the script?
Oh, for sure. It was one of the primary reasons why I agreed to do it. When I finished reading the script, I was very taken with a love story for starters and the romantic component of it. I had fallen in love and got remarried in 2022, about the time they gave me the script, so that spoke to me. But I was amazed by Zach's original script, the way that it blended the romance with science fiction, action, horror, political thriller and did so in a way that seemed effortless and still maintained some kind of purity for the tale that he was telling.
The first half of The Gorge is very much a romantic drama about two lonely characters finding connection across a vast distance, and has these beautiful moments of silence. This builds up to a more action-packed, stakes-driven second half. How did you set about balancing out these two distinct halves to ensure that the viewer is kept hooked?
I think it's the biggest challenge of the movie. The biggest challenge of the movie was, first of all, to get that non-dialogue quiet section of the movie right. That was technically very challenging because I had to shoot them separately. They're on enormous stages with these big sets of towers, they're probably 40 feet in the air, so they're not doing those scenes with each other. I had to say to Anya, “Here's what I did with Miles on Tuesday,” and maybe show her some footage and have her react accordingly. Getting that right was a challenge.
But I thought the greater challenge of the movie was once they go into the gorge, and all hell breaks loose. I wanted to maintain their connection, their connectivity and keep the romantic storyline going, at least on an intuitive level for the audience. For me, that was about going into this chaotic action, almost video-game-like gunplay with these creatures. But I was very focused in directing those scenes on how they look at each other, how they watch after each other, put themselves in harm's way for each other, work as a unit, as a team. I find all that very romantic. Of course we stop and have some moments of intimacy between them still while they're in the gorge but it was just important for me to let the focus directorially be on their awareness of the other, and they're continuing protection of, and concern for, the other while they're under duress.
You mentioned video games and you're right, once in the gorge the action feels like a gem brought to life in the best way. Video games have come so far in recent years with their stories being just as compelling as the gameplay. Were there any that you looked to?
I'm a long-time gamer. I don't play as much as I used to, but I have a 21-year-old and a 19-year-old son, so you can't have two boys that age and not have played an awful lot of team shooting games. The Call of Duty games we play all the time still. Gears of War, Call of Duty, these are games that I continue to play… Halo going back even further, Ghost Recon. All of those are great games and they're just getting progressively better. It's gotten to the point where, I think it's the latest Call of Duty game, I can't keep up. My kids are so good. The play is so fast, and they're so good, that even as an experienced gamer, I can't do what they do. I've found myself just tapping out and being like, “I'm just gonna watch you guys.”
One aspect that is really interesting in The Gorge is that the towers into which Levi and Drasa dwell are very different. Levi's is cold and functional and devoid of comfort, with books the only point of contact. For Drasa there is more of a nest and cosy vibe with a huge library of records to pour through. These environments reflect aspects of their characters whilst also having wider implications for those who created them. It's such a little touch, but one that speaks volumes. How important are elements like this to you as a storyteller?
They are so important. Even down to the architecture of the two towers. One that's much more formal, in a sort of brutalist way, and one that's – Drasa's tower has a little bit more of a progressive elegance to it. I had good conversations with the production designer too about what I was trying to draw between the East and West, and the familiarity of living in isolation. The soldiers who would come and occupy the East Tower are going to bring these comforts with them in a way that maybe a Western soldier might not be trained to do, or might not care to do. I thought that was playing against the stereotypes a bit. But certainly because of the amount of time that they spend in their respective towers, they had to be a reflection of the characters in some respect or the movie would be lacking an emotional component.
You have the excellent Anya Taylor Joy and Miles Teller as your leads, what did they bring to their roles?
I really did my homework on Miles; I hadn't seen a lot of the work that he did. He's done some great things that I didn't really know about. I'd seen, I think everything that Anya had done, but I cast them because both of them are very, very good at making interesting nuanced choices in intimate scenes. They're both really good at that. I felt that was key to the movie.
What acting is ultimately, are choices. Actors, in any given scene, even if they're just standing still and having a conversation, there's a hundred choices that you can make, a thousand choices sometimes you can make in any given scene, and acting is about the choices they make. I was amazed at both of their abilities to make great choices in intimate scenes in particular, and boy, was I right about that because they both constantly surprised me while we were shooting, in making choices that were not what I had even directed them to do, but as I was filming, I was just sort of gobsmacked like, “oh, that might be the best possible choice, I wish I had thought of that.”
There are also some fun little Easter eggs, you've got Miles playing the drums and you've got Anya playing chess…
That is pure happenstance. That was not a conscious choice. That was in the script before I cast them. The two things they did together, and when I realized, “oh god, I've cast the star of Queen's Gambit and Whiplash. What am I going to do now?” I just decided I'm going to leave it. People, I think, will enjoy the reference and I'm not going to take it out just because of their previous work.
What makes The Gorge so special is that it is original, it is not based on an existing IP. Why do you hope that people tune in to watch it?
For exactly that reason. I mean that was probably the final thing that made me decide to say yes to the movie. Because when it really hit me that Skydance and Apple were willing to make a movie of this size, this kind of budget, and it's not a sequel, it's not a franchise, it's not based on IP. Like you said, it's a totally original story, and not only that but an original story that was attempting to blend five or six genres in a way that I can't think of another movie that even tries. I thought God, this is the kind of movie I want to see. This is the kind of tentpole big-budget movie I want to see, so I should make it, and do the best that I can. Hopefully it will do very well and add inspiration for all production companies and studios to take bigger swings with these big-budget films.
The Gorge is now available on Apple TV.
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