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):
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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.
The Gorge tried to emulate some of the visual aspects of Annihilation in terms of the colour pallette, but
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unlike the latter The Gorge completely neutralised the cosmic dread by trying to explain the horrors with pseudoscience. And it was baaad pseudoscience. Like the mutagen being “in the fog”, which is gas coming from missiles (predating the V2 rockets??) that have been… belching it since the mid 40s?? Bullets and knives/sabres being alternatively ineffective and 100% deadly to the horrors, gas and affected creatures being magically contained to the gorge, him not being able to bring personal effects yes her having a record player and loudspeaker with her preferred music present, those “satellite cloaking signals”…
Plus, I dislike horror films where the protagonists survive in the end. It completely nullifies the dread.