The Gorge

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The US special services budget was cut by doge, so they hired a freelance mercenary who was short of love. Russia's economy was in a downturn, and in order to cut costs, they hired an ENTP self-employed killer.

The whole thing seems absurd, but it actually makes sense logically. Some high-level projects in government departments have been put on hold after a lot of investment but without the desired results. Once the leaders who made the final decision retired or were transferred, no one had the authority to shut down the project, and no new funding could be applied for. A few executive leaders were left to barely clean up the mess, and in the end, there was not enough money for post-maintenance, so they had to outsource the work and hired these two idiots. It was really like drinking soup and spilling it all over your crotch, and wiping your butt and scratching the paper.

The two restless people were not like the previous guards who remembered the Cold War hatred and national hatred. They began to pass notes frantically and then to lure monsters frantically. One played music, the other lit up the Christmas tree, and beat drums and gongs just to kill monsters and attract the other side to shoot at them.

As soon as they showed their weapons, we knew this was a CP movie. The heroine's main weapon was AKM, while the hero's was M4A1; the heroine's long gun was AXMC precision rifle, while the hero's was Steyr .50M1; the heroine's heavy machine gun was the classic DShK, while the hero's was the famous .50 (Browning M2HB) machine gun. From the weapons, we can tell that they are a strong CP.

As for the automatic defense weapons, there is a flaw here. The Americans thoughtfully provided the Soviet side with the Phalanx MK15 Block1B shipborne close-in weapon system, while they used the less high-end M134 minigun on their own side.

So it is impossible to kill them at the end of the film. As we all know, dogs never die in this kind of Hollywood movie, and of course, the couple is still considered a dog. Chief villain, you can kill this pair of doomed lovers, but don't do it in a happy love movie that is released on Valentine's Day.

This is a Valentine's Day movie that was released directly on Apple's streaming platform Apple+ instead of being released in theaters. Compared with those movies that were released in theaters on Valentine's Day, "Forbidden Valley" may have a more festive atmosphere, especially with a two-day weekend following it. It is a good choice to watch it alone or with your lover. The premise is that your lover will not be scared by disgusting monsters or slap you for drooling over Anya Taylor-Joy. So, it is undeniable that you will have a better time watching it alone (in short, watching it alone), and here are the reasons.

This movie is a typical cool movie. First of all, the concept is very exciting. There is a canyon with a deep abyss in the middle, and a high tower on each side. There is a sniper on each tower. The two of them have to face the scary secrets hidden in the fog below the canyon, as well as the violent suppression from the top of the company. They are attacked from both sides, so they must join forces (male and female).

Secondly, the heroine Anya Taylor-Joy is straight out of "Rampage", but with better makeup and costumes, and with crisp movements, she is both beautiful and cool. And the male lead is also... indifferent. Another character that must be mentioned is the villain, played by Sigourney Weaver. Although the aunt is old, she is still straight, walks with a strong aura. Many of her fans must not be as strong as her.

Then there are the pictures and sound effects of the film. After all, it is a thrilling film, so the ears and eyes must be thrilled. Apple+, a subsidiary of Apple, participated in the investment, production and exclusive distribution of this film. It must be said that it has put a lot of effort in the audio-visual aspect. If you watch this film with a projector, you will definitely be shocked by its fast-moving shots, because it is a canyon, the physical space is wide, and parallel movement or fast falling will create a strong visual impact. The CG effect of the monster is not first-class, but it is scary enough on the scale of a home theater. In terms of sound effects, the film is very delicate. I pay more attention to the auditory enjoyment when watching thrilling films, so I must wear headphones to watch it. This film has a deep and solid bass, and the physical sound effects are delicate and subtle. If your home does not have a multi-channel surround stereo combination speaker, I suggest you also wear headphones to watch it. But then you can't watch it with your lover. So it's better to choose another movie for Valentine's Day, and save this movie for watching alone on the weekend - to enjoy it.

As a cool movie, don't be too demanding about the rationality of the plot, and don't try to dig out any meaning from the movie, just enjoy it. I heard that some people can see the national justice when watching cartoons, I think they are really tired of living. Movies are just commodities, and secondly they are ideological tools. Only in a few countries in the world are these two reversed. In short, I hope you keep your mind simple when watching this movie, the simpler the better.

Since the release of Sinister in 2012, director Scott Derrickson has been one of the most watched horror film directors in Hollywood. In recent years, his films The Black Phone and Videotape 85, which continued the videotape style of Sinister, have performed quite well, especially the former, which has considerable box office and will release a sequel this year.

The Canyons, which was just released on Valentine's Day and is strongly promoted by Apple TV at the beginning of the year, was developed from the script of the Black List in 2020. As a director's transitional film before the release of The Black Phone 2, it has the highlights and whimsy that an excellent horror movie should have, the retroism of the last century that screenwriter Zach Dean loves, and some inevitable regrets of online movies.

The film focuses on two snipers, a man and a woman, stationed on both sides of a mysterious canyon. During the long mission, they drew closer to each other in a silent way, and the canyon in the hearts of the lone killers was healed by love. But at this moment, the terrifying hollow men in the 500-meter-deep rift under their feet are constantly crawling out, and there is a conspiracy hidden in the fog...

Obviously, the story of this movie is very simple. Although the script of the film was shortlisted for the Hollywood script blacklist in 2020 , it does not win by complexity as a whole. Instead, it has the same retro blood as "The Tomorrow War", which was also written by Zach Dean and has a sense of déjà vu of sci-fi action movies of the last century - speechless murderous monsters and plump old-school heroes.

Levi and Dellasha in "The Canyon" undoubtedly inherited the latter point. They are sincere, pure and nosy, and there will be no complicated and unpredictable emotional development in the movie. So even if the protagonist of the film seems to have some post-war PTSD and loneliness, the psychological problems are not prominent, and even if there are, they serve the love section that the screenwriter values more and is more outstanding.

The first 30 minutes of the movie mainly introduce the concept and the daily life of the garrison, which is a relatively boring section. After 30 minutes, De Lasha began to interact with Levi. It was a bit late, but Zach Dean wrote the details of the interaction between the two very delicately, the mutual comfort and companionship of loneliness and trauma on the cracks of the soul, and the jokes of Whiplash X. In addition, Anya Taylor-Joy's performance is so spiritual. Who can not love Anya Taylor-Joy with short black hair? She is the elf of the movie.

In addition, Zach Dean also added conspiracy elements that were essential to action movies of the last century to the film, and used TS Eliot's "The Hollow Men" to create a strong intertextual relationship with the entire film. First of all, the first two lines of the poem "We are hollow men, we are people filled with grass" describe the appearance of the monsters in the movie - grass growing on their heads, and "The Valley of the Dying Star" is the bottom of the hell valley in the film.

The theme of the whole poem is a depiction of negative nihilism. The hollow people who do nothing are pathetic, even more pathetic than failure and cruelty. The earliest settlers became hollow people, implying their passive indifference to the conspiracy before them. Levi and De Lasha, who were once "hollow people" but now rely on each other, correspond to another famous saying of TS Eliot: "Only those who are willing to take risks and travel far can find out how far they can go" , whether it is love or justice.

Of course, as a horror movie fan, my personal favorite is the canyon adventure that unfolds 1 hour after the movie opens. At 35 minutes into the movie, Derrickson briefly showed the hollow men and their plant shapes. When you really go deep into the canyon, the director definitely learned from the worm valley in King Kong in terms of plot and location, but the display of the ecosystem is still a bit stingy.

Derrickson is very careful in dealing with the color of fog in the canyon, with yellow fog in the woods, purple covering the Twisted Skull Wasteland, and red warning of danger in the third stage of the adventure. Anya Taylor-Joy contributed a good fight scene with the tree man in the base, providing a little adjustment for this gun battle-based movie, at least much better than the drone at the end.

For me personally, the most eye-catching part of the whole film must be the yellow colloid on the rusty iron ladder and the flesh vines made of human beings. The visual design is novel enough and the body horror is intuitive. The key is that this is really very Dead Space. I love it. If the movie ended here, it would not pull me back to the boring world of normal colors. The drone war at the end really returned to the feeling of a water movie on the Internet.

Overall, Scott Derrickson's "The Canyons" does a decent job of mixing genres, a hodgepodge of romance, science fiction, horror and action, another retro show in Zach Dean's script, and the visual design of the middle section is indeed excellent. But online movies are always like this, if they want everything, they will have shortcomings. I think it would be better if Brad Pitt and George Clooney's "The Twins" had more action and gun battles.

The film sets the canyon biological weapon as being able to mix the DNA of all living things together, but the audience only saw a big centipede, a big spider, and a plant with some biological characteristics from beginning to end. Only the bloody ground spike trap was eye-catching. It really lacks imagination and length, and the drone scene at the end is really unnecessary. Compared with the same concept "Annihilation", it is really not as good as it seems, which is the biggest regret of the whole film.

Finally, I must praise that Scott Derrickson said in an interview that he wanted to shoot such an original new film. At a time when there are remakes, sequels and derivatives all year round, I can only say respect. In addition, "Canyon" is also a necessary transitional work before "The Black Telephone 2", because the timeline of the latter will be in high school, so Derrickson is making a movie waiting for the actors in the previous one to grow up. In short, I look forward to "The Black Telephone 2" which will be released on October 17, and I hope Anya will make more horror movies.

Recently, it is rare to see high-concept and romantic sci-fi movies. "The Canyons" was launched on Apple TV+ on Valentine's Day. Although it obviously borrowed elements from many classic sci-fi or disaster films, the overall narrative structure is relatively complete, the logic is self-consistent, and there are many moving parts.

The film is set in a mysterious canyon, whose location is hidden from the world by a militarized organization using advanced technology. Snipers from the Eastern and Western camps are stationed on both sides of the canyon, and their duty is to ensure that the "hollow men" in the canyon cannot escape. In fact, this canyon is more like hell, and the snipers' task is to guard the gate of hell. This setting allows the film to incorporate political metaphors from periods such as the Cold War, and also writes about themes such as loneliness, forbidden love, and institutional confrontation from a personal level.

The narrative structure of the film is more like an American drama, which can be roughly divided into three parts: island love, canyon exploration, and system confrontation. However, the styles of these three parts are not unified, and even seem a bit fragmented.

The opening uses a typical "save the cat" paragraph to set the tone for character development. Although Levi and Drasa are both battle-hardened snipers who have carried out countless kill missions, the film still deliberately shows their soft side. Levi strokes a dog on the beach, and Drasa's conversation with her father reveals her inner conflict. These details do not give the characters complexity, but further reinforce their flat image. They are typical "good guys" who have not become cold and ruthless due to the influence of war or environment, but retain an idealized moral purity. This character setting may lack depth, but in the context of genre films, it can effectively cater to the audience's expectation that "justice will prevail in the end."

As symbols of the East and West, the two protagonists spy on each other across the canyon, have few lines, and even develop a "long-distance relationship." Among them, the plot of talking and playing chess can be said to be a replica of "Dawn of the Dead." Guarding the safe fortress built by the two to prevent the "hollow men"/zombies who keep trying to climb up from the bottom of the canyon are classic narrative modes of zombie movies.

The love clue of the film is reminiscent of "Passengers". To some extent, the canyon has become a stage exclusively for the two. Their love relationship is based on the tension of opposing identities, but the sense of ruins of the world has magnified their emotional intensity. Levi is portrayed as a depressed character with a poetic temperament, immersed in the poems of TS Eliot and writing about life in poetry. This romantic setting is reasonable in the love section, but it may be too idealistic in the realistic framework of the overall narrative. In contrast, Drasa's personality is more flamboyant, just like Charlie's Angels, who will actively express emotions and constantly tease Levi on the other side, showing a free and uninhibited side.

The most poetic part of the film is perhaps the reflection of love on the passage of time. As the seasons change, the climate of the canyon also changes, and the relationship between the two gradually warms up in this isolated place. When Levi climbs the rope to cross the canyon, the roar of the monster in the canyon just becomes a concrete expression of the difficulty of this love.

However, when the story enters the canyon, the narrative begins to get out of control. The monster's image design seems too stylized, highly similar to the mutant creatures in "Annihilation", and the transparent skeleton shape can be said to have no novelty. It can be seen that the whole film attempts to give these monsters a deeper symbolic meaning, but in fact, they are no different from typical zombies in narrative function, because they have neither individual consciousness nor real voice, and all meanings are imposed by humans. This film also specially found the first generation female lead of "Alien" as the big boss, but the atmosphere creation is not as good as "Alien" decades ago.

What is even more disappointing is that the film has been laying the groundwork for a long time, seemingly suggesting that there is some grand truth hidden behind the "hollow man", which may even involve deeper philosophical or social issues. As a result, the final revelation seems very narrow, and all the conspiracies are just experiments of a private company, without going deep into the more grand historical background of the Cold War, World War II, biological and chemical weapons, etc. The epic feeling created in the first half collapsed at this moment, which greatly reduced the depth of the theme, and it can even be said to be a bit petty.

In the scene where they return to the ground from the canyon, the jeep on the edge of the canyon becomes a vertical battlefield. The characters skillfully use the structure of the car to fight fiercely with the hollow man climbing up. The tension of this scene is far greater than the fighting scene inside the canyon. However, why did the automatic shooting system not trigger after the characters climbed out of the canyon? This can be said to be an obvious bug.

The development of the second half of the plot is even more sloppy. The film attributes the ambition of "building the strongest US army" to a private company, or even just the character of Bartholomew, making the secret that was supposed to affect the global situation eventually become a conspiracy that can be easily destroyed. Whether Levi and Drasa were infected inside the canyon, this topic was forgotten by everyone with the arrival of Bartholomew.

The two of them easily activated the canyon's self-destruct device with a sniper rifle, escaped from the explosion range at the last moment, and repeatedly calculated the kilometers during the escape to create tension. This scene is more romantic in visual presentation. Whether it implies some kind of symbolic interpretation of the atomic bomb still needs further exploration.

Although there is not much innovative content in this film, fortunately, the relevant genre elements are strictly blended and mixed, so that the plot is advanced within a reasonable framework. This effect may be produced because the starting point is well chosen. The concept of the canyon and the confrontation between the East and the West can accommodate a lot of imagination and have corresponding practical significance.

This film combines elements of action, horror, sci-fi and romance in a way that's entertaining but not particularly profound. The central concept of two enemy agents guarding opposite sides of a mysterious canyon is compelling, and both Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy bring charisma to their roles.

The canyon itself serves as both a physical and metaphorical divide between East and West, allowing for some interesting political commentary that unfortunately isn't fully developed. Director Scott Derrickson, known for his horror background, brings some genuinely creepy moments once the "hollow men" begin to emerge, though the creature designs feel derivative of better films like "Annihilation."

What works best is the unlikely romance that develops between two people who can only communicate across a vast divide. Their initial suspicion gradually giving way to connection provides the emotional core of the film. The scenes where they manage to communicate despite the barriers between them are genuinely touching.

The film loses its way somewhat in the third act, with a corporate conspiracy plot that feels tacked on and undercooked. Sigourney Weaver is underutilized as the villain, though she brings gravitas to even her limited screen time.

As a Valentine's Day release, it offers enough thrills and romance to satisfy, but doesn't quite reach the heights of either genre at their best. Still, in an era of endless sequels and reboots, there's something refreshing about an original concept executed with solid production values and committed performances.