'The Gorge' Director Scott Derrickson Discusses His Genre-Bending Creature Feature [Interview]

The world’s most dangerous secret lies within The Gorge, and Scott Derrickson isn’t about to spoil it.

The Sinister and The Black Phone director sat down with Bloody Disgusting to discuss his genre-bending new film, which offers something for everyone this Valentine’s Day with action-packed thrills, passionate romance, sci-fi intrigue, and horrific creatures.

The originality of the concept, scripted by Zach Dean (The Tomorrow War), attracted Derrickson to The Gorge. “When Skydance sent me the script, I just got excited about the idea of a big event movie that’s not a sequel or a franchise or IP, but is an original story blending a lot of different genres.”

Miles Teller (Top Gun: Maverick) and Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch) star as two highly-trained operatives who grow close from a distance after being sent to guard opposite sides of a mysterious gorge. When an evil below emerges, they must work together to survive what lies within.

“I tend to cast pretty well,” Derrickson remarks. “I had to first of all believe in each of the actors as an elite sniper, which in this case I just did. That eliminates a lot of actors from possibly casting. Beyond that, they’re both really good at playing nuanced choices. They’re very good at intimate scenes. I just had a suspicion they would have good chemistry, which they did. It was great.”

Derrickson says it was “a bucket list experience” directing Sigourney Weaver in the film. “She’s everything you’d hope she’d be. She’s really dedicated, very disciplined in the craft. She cares about the movie, wants to understand the movie as a whole and incredibly warm to everybody on set. Everybody loved her. It was terrific.”

Although the threat that lurks inside the gorge is being kept under wraps, Derrickson delved into the creature design process.

“When you’re dealing with creature effects, you have to start at the concept art stage. You have to talk to artists about what your vision is, what you want, and they start to generate images. You give notes on that, build on that and splinter off into more exploration. On this one, we did a tremendous amount of artwork before landing on all the different individual creature designs in the film.”

The biggest challenge he faced on the production were the big set pieces, which were difficult on a technical level. “We did some things that hadn’t been done or hadn’t been done in quite the same way, and a lot of big physical sets. I don’t like virtual environments for the most part. I like set extensions, but the more physical a set, the more real it looks.

“Being able to get all of that done in a timely fashion and have it be ready for production, staying in front of the schedule; you make a movie this size, it’s a little bit like running in front of a moving train. You just got to hit every railroad tie perfectly or the train’s gonna run you over, which in this case it didn’t.”

The titular gorge was a virtual location, but that doesn’t mean it was computer generated. Derrickson explains, “We shot plates in Norway for the canyon, for the rock walls, for the forests, for the sky, and then sort of stitched together the virtual space itself of the gorge. The top of the pillars of the watchtowers were real, giant, to-scale sets, and then the virtual space around them was built from the real photography.”

The filmmaker calls it “a dream come true” to have Academy Award winners Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross (The Social Network, Gone Girl) compose the score. “I was really thrilled that they wanted to do the movie, and their way of working is really interesting. They write you a ton of music based on just the script, on what they hear as being relevant to the film.”

He continues, “They give you more music than you’re ever going to use in a movie, but you sort of pick out the pieces that you think work the most, and then they build off of those. Some of those pieces directly end up in the movie, and then some of them, they’ll take direction and tailor them to different scenes.

“They’re very collaborative, really respectful and boy, do they care. They came to a bunch of the mixes, right up to the final mix. They were very precise about what they liked and didn’t like, and I loved that. I love their investments and how connected they were to the work. It was great. It was really an amazing experience.”

The music also features several choice needle drops: Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ Grammy-nominated “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” Ramones‘ classic punk anthem “Blitzkrieg Bop,” Twisted Sister‘s take on “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” and a rendition of Bob Dylan‘s “All Along the Watchtower” by UK rapper Devlin.

“I care a lot about needle drops. I think one of the most important things you do as a director is pick those songs that play in a film because of the tone they bring to them,” notes Derrickson.

“I knew that I wanted to have a big dance scene in the middle of the movie. There was a couple of lines about dancing in the script, but I wanted that to be a real scene. It took me a long time before settling on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song. And then we built the choreography around that song.”

He adds, “Then, of course, the Ramones. I love the Ramones, I love that song, and I thought Anya would have fun with it — which she certainly did.”

Derrickson believes The Gorge will appeal to viewers for the same reason it appealed to him. “If you want to see a big, exciting event movie that isn’t what’s expected, isn’t the same thing, isn’t a franchise, sequel, IP-driven piece of familiarity — this is what you want to see. That’s really why I did it. After I read the script, I thought. ‘I want to see a movie this size that’s this daring and interesting and blends genre this way.’

The Gorge releases on Apple TV+ on February 14.

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” Derrickson reasons. “It’s a very romantic movie!”