I’m going to start off by saying I would recommend watching The Gorge as blind as you can. The trailer doesn’t spoil much but it does reveal the framework and direction of the story. If you like the ‘vibe’ or setting of Annihilation though you may like it.
If you don’t mind a bit of a reveal this is what I mean by the last part:
spoiler
Both movies are about a quarantined area where mysteries lurk.
It’s near-future sc-fi but leans a bit more into horror and action than Annihilation.
Here’s what I liked and disliked about the movie (real spoilers):
spoiler
I went into The Gorge after only seeing the movie poster so I thought it was going to be some kind of Cold War-style forbidden love movie. I was glad to see it evolve into something else.
What I liked the most was the setting and premise. A heavily defended remote and isolated area full of mutated mysterious creatures and plants where attacks are infrequent but when they happen they’re in World War Z style is something I find neat. I feel like I see elements of this regularly in video games but less so in movies.
Once they were inside the gorge I would have liked to have seen the mutations as a bit more grand or awe inspiring like they appeared in Annihilation. Maybe a bit less humanoid. That might be a bit hard though considering how dark and foggy it was and how they immediately were trying to get out rather than explore.
I liked the book Annihilation more than the movie.
I’ll give it a watch. I Annihilation was such a wonderful mix of music and visuals
Annihilation is one of my favorite movies and I honestly thought The Gorge is just a throwaway movie that isn’t worth watching. Your post will definitely make me watch it now. Thanks for the recommendation.
EDIT: Just watched it. It’s meh. It does have a similar setting with Annihilation, but that’s about it. Not even the vibe is similar as OP mentioned. The film didn’t know what genre it was supposed to be, and there were some pretty big plotholes towards the end. It’s an ok watch maybe if you don’t have anything else to do, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it if I were you.
goddammit. i feel so betrayed by this movie and by the seductive trailers for this movie and by any and all positive reviews of this movie (including yours).
it was such a shitty movie. booooooOOO
What didn’t you like about it?
It’s not a movie I’ll likely watch several times like I have with Annihilation but I thought it was good and had memorable moments. That’s a lot more than I can say about other movies I’ve watched recently.
Once I got to the blind statement in your post, I stopped reading. I love annihilation, and have had the gorge on my radar.
Will hopefully be watching it tonight. Looks like you can do a free trial or apple + via prime. I thought it was on Tubi, sadly not. Also looks like it may be on some streaming sites
Thanks for the recommendation.
I’d be interested to hear what you think and if you felt it was a fair comparison.
