‘The Gorge’ Director Scott Derrickson On His Dedication To Practical Effects In His Latest Film
This past Valentine’s Day, director Scott Derrickson’s latest horror story hit Apple TV+. Titled The Gorge, this isn’t just a horror movie. It’s also a love story, a sci-fi action thrill, and, of course, a horror movie. From a script by Zach Dean, Derrickson brought The Gorge to life, quite literally, thanks to his continued dedication to using practical effects as much as possible.
As the title suggests, the film centers around a mysterious gorge that’s shrouded in government conspiracy. Guarding the gorge are two people, one on each side, residing in concrete watch towers. For one year, snipers Levi (Miles Teller) and Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) are supposed to guard the gorge, shoot whatever comes out, and never speak with each other. But, of course, the two strangers fall in love through binoculars and whiteboard signs.
The setting itself was crucial for the film and Derrickson didn’t just want it to be all green screen and reproduced digitally. He wanted to find ways to incorporate physical sets and physical photography to make the gorge feel more lived-in and real because, as a horror lover first and foremost, he knows that practical always looks better. That’s exactly why he hired Rick Heinrichs (Sleepy Hollow, Glass Onion) as his production designer.
“He’s renowned for his physical sets,” Derrickson explained in a round-table interview. “I knew I had a good size budget for the movie and I really wanted to focus the CGI work on set extensions and not virtual environments, the exception being the gorge itself. But even that was still physical photography.”
Derrickson went on to explain that even though the gorge on screen was a digital creation, it wasn’t a computer-generated environment.
“We shot real rock walls and canyons and forests in Norway and then constructed the gorge itself out of photographed material. That’s why it looks so real,” he said. “It is a CGI construct, but the imagery of the stuff that you’re looking at is all real.”
It’s a unique and important perspective on CGI and realizing how to use it as a tool rather than as a replacement. In constructing the digital with as many real assets as possible, a filmmaker is able to create an environment that feels lived-in, even in a film with a premise like the gorge. Derrickson gained this perspective while working on his first big action movie, Doctor Strange.
“I’m interested in CGI, insofar as it can still feel tactile, he said. “When I made Doctor Strange, I was dealing with magic and all kinds of psychedelic stuff, but I always wanted it to feel physical. That’s why things like the portals you feel like you’d know what they would feel like if you touched them.”
On top of Derrickson’s work on the sets, there’s the incredible chemistry between Taylor-Joy and Teller who spend most of the movie separated, which makes it rather difficult to create the aforementioned chemistry. Yet, the two actors did it and made it look easy, especially when it came to crafting their character’s distinct personalities.
For Taylor-Joy, Drasa loves to put on a show, so being watched by a man with binoculars is more of a game to her, at least at first.
Taylor-Joy explained in another roundtable interview, “The thing that’s interesting about Drasa is I think people who are uncomfortable with voyeurism, and I kind of count myself as one of those people, are not necessarily that comfortable in their own skin. And I think DRA really is, she plays with life, which is something that is completely in contrast to the severity of the job that she does.”
She went on to say, “She enjoy[s being watched] because she’s performative even when there’s nobody to see her. That’s just the way that she is as a person.” So I think having the additional audience member probably really just sparked that for her.”
The Gorge is out now on Apple TV+.
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