Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch every zombie movie ever produced. Yes, all of them. How many is that? The current total is more than 600, and we will try to watch them in order of release date, with a few flash forwards for fun. We look forward to watching zombie cinema evolve and become what it is today. I'm John, and I'm joined by my co-host Andy and our producer Brad. Join us for this journey to see which of us makes it to the end alive. Hello, producer Brad. Hello, Andy.

Hey, John. Hey, Brad.

Hello, gentlemen.

Welcome to The Present, where we're watching a movie that came out in the last couple of weeks. As we record this, it's early 2025.

The land of two-hour movies.

The land of two-hour, yeah, trigger warning to all our fans who've been watching along. This is twice as long as all our other movies, so sorry about that. Yes, today, we're going to be talking about The Gorge. Movie that asks if two of the most perfect looking humans in the world are lonely, what chance the rest of us have?

That's a wrap.

That's a wrap. So yes, The Gorge. How did we get here? This is exciting. I think we just decided there's so much buzz around this movie, and then somebody said, are you going to cover it? I said, well, I guess that means it's a zombie movie.

Yeah, as far as I know, it's not really billed as a zombie movie. If you look at the poster, there's nothing. There are no black and white or green, Bellalu Gosi on this one. But I guess it's a little bit of a mild spoiler that there are zombies in this movie that we're covering it on this show, actually. But I hope by this time you've had a chance to watch it, or you don't care that much about being spoiled.

Yeah.

So as far as content warnings on this episode, I noted with interest actually that this film is rated PG-13.

Yes.

My assumption is that you can't really get the expected level of zombiness without an R rating, but this movie may prove me wrong. So that said, there's not really a lot to call out in this movie as far as upsetting or disturbing material. So I think you're on pretty safe grounds as long as you're okay with your typical zombie violence and shooting things in the head.

Yeah, in fact, PG-13 is the, I mean, we could talk about this forever, but PG-13 is so odd because it's, there's tons of violence and death, and when there's a kissy face scene, it's all blurred out because that is too racy for the American people, so it always makes me laugh. But it's the case.

Indeed.

My wife would like to disagree on one point. We watched this together, which we don't normally do, because I hadn't seen it and she hadn't seen it, and then at night she goes, I'm going to sleep now and I'm going to have nightmares about spider zombies with skulls, with human skulls on their bodies.

Do you not pause the movie continually to take little notes, John, as you watch?

You know what I did? I do. What I did this time is when I saw a quote I wanted to pull, or a point I wanted to make, I scrawled it in a paper notebook. I usually take notes on my computer, and then I went back and confirmed the times of the quotes and stuff that I wanted, and then sent them to Brad.

I've had several friends say, hey, next time you watch a zombie movie, let's get together and we'll watch it together. It's like, no, you don't want to watch it with me. I pause it every seven seconds to write something down. Brad, do you want to tell us a little bit about the context in which this film was released and the people behind it?

The Gorge was released exclusively to the Apple TV+ streaming service on February 14th, 2025. So John, you should have watched it on Valentine's Day with your friends, not after.

It is a love story.

It is. This is the first film in Apple Plus that has horror and zombie themes, though Apple lists this film as a thriller. The top grossing horror films in the last year were A Quiet Place, Day One, Alien Romulus, Long Legs, Smile 2, Nosferatu, and Terrifier 2. None of those films were zombie movies, but there were some out there. Apocalypse Z, The Beginning of the End, Night of the Zupocalypse, Die Alone, and Dead Men.

Wow. I've been so stuck in the 40s, I missed all of those zombie movies.

I missed them all too.

Yeah.

Scott Derrickson directed. His past credits include The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Doctor Strange. And The Gorge was written by Zach Dean, and he wrote Deadfall, The Tomorrow War, and Fast X.

Of those I recognize Derrickson for sure. He's got a pretty solid war CV, if I recall.

Yeah.

And this film has a very small cast, led by Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy. And I looked it up, it's Anya, not Anya.

Well, thank you. I would have said Anya all day. So Anya.

It's Anya.

Got it.

Teller plays Levi, and is best known for Whiplash and Top Gun Maverick. And Taylor-Joy plays Draza, and she was in Split, The Queen's Gambit, Dune Part II, Furiosa, Mad Max Saga, and The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance.

Yes.

Also from The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance is Sigourney Weaver. She plays Bartholomew, and we all know her credits, Alien, Ghostbusters, Galaxy Quest, Avatar, Long List.

Andy, how excited were you that Sigourney Weaver... As 80s kids who absolutely adore Alien and Aliens, I'll watch anything with Sigourney Weaver in it. It kind of doesn't matter.

I didn't check the cast on this before starting the movie, and I was so delighted when Sigourney Weaver appeared. Yes, for sure.

Well, John, Chopa Dirasu, he plays JD. He was in an episode of Black Mirror. He was in Dark Crystal, and he was in Slow Horses. Did you recognize him?

I did recognize him. I was like, I know that guy, and I couldn't remember where it was from. It was from Slow Horses, because I've watched-

Season two. Yeah, he plays Sean Donovan.

Yeah, he's great. I loved him, and I love Slow Horses, so I was excited to see him.

And he's good in his little bit part in this film as well.

Yeah.

William Houston plays Draza's father. He was in Dr. Strains, Justice League, Paddington 2 and His Dark Materials. And the last credit I'd like to point out was Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross composed the score.

Nice.

I paused the movie as soon as the music started, because I was like, this has to be Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. So, I mean, I'm an old school Nine Inch Nails fan, but I'm so glad at some point Trent Reznor moved into movie soundtracks because they're all wonderful.

Yes. So some cultural context for this film, as it's released in the year that we are currently living, it's a little different for us. We're used to talking about World War II and the events of World War II and those things that seem so distant. So the context of this film, in watching it, and I think we'll talk about it as we go through it, it really is, I think the big cultural things that this movie is about is one, COVID. This is definitely a COVID and a post-COVID movie. There's themes of sort of isolation and distrust and sort of fear, contagion, not to spoil anything, though we're going to spoil everything, but the zombie menace is from a lab experiment gone wrong, and also a sort of lack of falling or a fading belief in our cultural institutions. There's a lot of that, the theme of that in here. And rise of corporatism, I think, is another big theme. So I think all of those things are in this movie in one way or another.

Do we want to take a look at the poster? I realize that since this is released to a streaming service, maybe the poster is not the main way most people will be learning about it. But do you want to take a look at it nonetheless?

Yeah. Describe it to me, Andy.

All right. So we've got The Gorge. By far the most prominent feature is the two stars are featured quite prominently. They are positioned as they are in the movie, on opposite sides of this sort of valley or gorge, you might say. Yeah. They are lovingly touching foreheads on the top of this poster. I think laying the groundwork for their relationship and their romance is going to be a pretty important part of this film. There's no sign of zombies or actually any threats on this poster. Do you have anything to add?

No. It says, the world's most dangerous secret lies between them. In the movie, they each occupy this sort of solitary tower on opposite sides of a gorge from each other. So I think that is all you need to know about that. I will say kudos to whoever did the marketing for this film. One thing I did enjoy is I didn't know what form the creatures or the terror would take. They did a great job of setting up their very high concept premise and saying, there's two snipers, they live across a gorge from each other, they get to know each other and then one of them falls in and oh no what's in there. You know what I mean?

Yes.

I thought the trailer was really effective.

Yeah. The trailer gave me really big like Lost or Cabin in the Woods vibes. Yeah. To some extent, the movie didn't play out in the way I expected based on those vibes that I got from the trailer.

Yes.

But the trailer really gives you the sense of like there's this kind of unnatural setup and with something obviously going on behind the scenes and how well our characters interact with it.

Again, we're watching a movie from this year and we're not watching a movie from 70 years ago. We are spoiling the heck out of this thing. If you don't want to be spoiled on The Gorge, stop now and then come back after you watch it.

Absolutely.

I just want to add what was fun for me in the research of this is, in all the films we've done, especially obviously the older ones, when I look for the poster to present you guys, it's hard to know, is it the original theatrical release from the air? Is it a reissue? What is it? This one, Apple has a link for promotion material and you can download the authorized version of the poster.

That's amazing.

That was the first.

Hey John, you did forget to mention that on the poster, also this movie promises dynamic sex lectures and an explanation of why romantic relationships go wrong. That's a little deep cut for our faithful listeners.

Yeah, let's be honest. This movie is a loose remake of Sex Maniac. We were saving that for later. No, I'm kidding.

So hey John, without further ado, you want to jump on it?

Let's do it. Let me start by just doing like a just short summary of the movie. We'll do sort of plot from beginning to end and then we'll dive in and break it down. So this movie, The Gorge, is about two people who get recruited as sort of guardians of the titular gorge, one living on each side in these towers. Over time, they sort of get to know each other, form a relationship, and then one of them falls in the gorge and discover the secrets of the gorge. The horrible creatures that live in there and realize that they have to do something to stop it, and it's up to them because the people who have sent them here don't really want them to succeed, they want them to fail, and that's the sort of super high level plot of the movie. Did I miss anything or is that really kind of cover it?

Just their names, Levi and Draza. But there's only two people in the movie, so it's not a big deal.

Yeah, Levi is the American, he's a Marine. Draza is the woman on the sort of quote unquote Eastern side. She gets her orders from Moscow in the narrative of the film, but she says very explicitly, I'm Lithuanian, I'm not actually Russian. I think that's just a hat tip to the patriots who might want to watch this movie.

So you want to talk a little bit about, I mean, the opening act of this movie is introducing us to each of those two characters. You want to talk a little bit about that?

I love a movie that opens in media res, and the opening of this movie is Draza, she's like in a cave or something, she's camping. Something happens, she hears a sound, she peeks out of her cave, and then pulls out a sniper rifle, and we realize she is here to assassinate somebody. Somebody who looks not a little bit like Vladimir Putin, steps off a plane and is shot by Draza, which then she collects the shell, and she goes to see her father, who is playing his accordion over the grave of his wife and Draza's mother.

Do you think Trent Reznor created the accordion, or the plane here?

You know what, I would make my day, but I doubt it. Okay. Yeah. Anything you want to add about that scene? I thought it was an effective opening, I liked it quite a bit.

Yeah, this is a really strong opening. I didn't know, I watched the trailer months ago, and I remember thinking, oh, that looks pretty interesting. But it all left my mind. So I was basically going in blind, and learning that she's a sniper was like, oh, okay. It was a nice little surprise.

Yeah. And we learned that her mother is dead, her father is dying of cancer, and she just says, and actually, I think we then cut to Levi's intro.

Yeah, they cut from one to the other a little bit here.

Levi wakes up in a cold sweat in his intro. He goes to the beach. He clearly lives in San Diego because he gets called the Camp Pendleton, which is in San Diego, the largest marine camp in the country.

Can I tell you my little Camp Pendleton story?

Yeah, please. That's right. You're from San Diego.

Yeah. When I was younger, some kids from my local high school stole a Humvee from Camp Pendleton.

Amazing.

I think they made it about a day before they were caught, and that was the last I heard of them.

Yeah. Kids out there, don't steal stuff from Marines. Can I just give you general advice? It's not good.

What happened to them?

I actually don't know. All I know is that that was when I learned that there was an organization called Naval Intelligence or Investigative Services or something, that their job was to hunt down high schoolers who stole military hardware.

Amazing.

Well, it's funny to say that because I was born on the 29 Palms Marine Base, and in the 80s, my parents took me back to visit it, and we drove up to the guard gate, and my dad said, Hey, I was stationed here 20 years ago. My son was born. Could we come in? The guy goes, Sure, and waved us in. You can't do that now.

Yeah, it's a different world.

So I imagine it wasn't as hard as we might think for those kids to get on.

Yeah, you're probably right. Yeah. This was pre-911, I guess. So everything was different back then, right?

So then Levi, he wakes up in a cold sweat. He goes to the beach and he gets a text that says, there's somebody coming to pick you up at 1600, and you're going to have a mission. He gets taken to Camp Pendleton, where he meets with Sigourney Weaver. We don't know her role. We know she's ordering around a Marine Colonel. So he suspects she's like some high level operative in the CIA or something.

She's in civilian clothes.

She's in civilian clothes.

Can I point out that a couple of things here? Real quick, John, first, they don't turn on the lights in Camp Pendleton, like in the rooms. So this scene, like most of the movie is just dark and dim.

This movie is very dark.

Could you hit the lights?

Yeah.

And secondly, yeah, the little like mini montage we got of Levi really made it very clear he's like a lonely, isolated person. Like I thought there was a neat little moment where a dog runs up to him on the beach and he's sort of petting the dog. And you think, oh, that's sweet. He has a pet dog.

Yeah.

But no, that's, it turns out that somebody else's dog that was just walking down the beach. And I thought that was a pretty sharp 30 seconds of like to tell us everything we need to know about this guy.

Yeah, exactly. I thought that was good. And Andraza sort of has a similar thing. So what happens, and I want to do one old man complain about this movie and it'll be coming in a second. But Sigourney Weaver gives him a quiz. Do you live alone? Is there somebody who'd be miss you? And then she offers him this assignment, which takes a year. It's totally secret. And then we cut to to Draza talking to her father. And he says, I'm dying. She's going to take this job that's going to take her away from a year. It's the same job that was just described to Levi. And she gives her father a tearful farewell telling him, and she tells him, look, if I have cancer, if I'm not dead by Valentine's Day, I'm going to take care of it myself. So light a candle and think of me on Valentine's Day and know that I always love you. It's a kind of moving scene. And then we're off. Do you want to, I want to do my old man complaint, but I want to see if you had anything else you want to say about these intro scenes.

Well, I don't know. I'm also an old man. So maybe my complaints will be the same. First is like, way to ruin Valentine's Day for the rest of your young daughter's life. Yeah.

First of all, is Valentine's Day celebrated in Lithuania? Like, I don't even know. I thought it was just an American holiday, but that's a different story.

Yeah, I'm not sure. My main reaction to this scene is, again, I didn't know what I was going into with this movie, but it really, when I learned that both of the two leads are elite snipers plagued by guilt, my eyes started to roll really hard out of my head.

Yeah, elite snipers with perfect symmetrical features and perfect hair plagued by guilt.

Yeah. I mean, I want to talk to this when we talk about our... And again, importantly, this movie did not claim to be a zombie movie, so I'm not criticizing it for not meeting my zombie movie criteria. But one of the criteria I have been thinking about adding to your pillars of the zombie movie, John, is that the protagonists are sort of everyday heroes. And when two elite snipers appear on the screen, this is basically a fantasy type of hero, right?

Yes.

These might as well be ninja wizards as far as their competence goes. Yeah.

It feels very video gamey in that sense, right? Like you're an elite, choose your character and you're going to go shoot a bunch of zombies.

Yeah. So I'm not saying that that means you can't have a zombie movie with like these insanely competent lead characters.

Right.

But it does, it does flavor, it does tilt the film and like they do that right out the gate here. What do you think about all that?

I think you're right. And I think it is different. The fact that they are, they are so highly skilled, right? Because the whole premise of, say, either the the Dawn of the Dead that we watched or the original Dawn of the Dead is, these are just regular folks trapped in a difficult situation, right? And they go to great pains to explain that. And that is not the case here at all. Everybody here is super competent.

So a question that that recurred to me throughout this film was, could they have done this exact same film, but had them be low level grunts, just like average Joes? And we can talk about that when we get into the details a little bit later. Might I personally believe they could have and it wouldn't really have done anything to hurt the movie and might have made it feel more like the sort of zombie experience I want. But again, the movie is doing what it set out to do. It doesn't answer to me.

Yeah. I wonder, I mean, we could have a whole conversation about this, but it seems like competence and almost super powered ability is a requirement to be a protagonist in a movie these days. They're functionally superheroes, right? They're superpowers.

I don't think they miss a shot in the entire movie.

Absolutely not. Yeah.

Anyway, but I don't want to stall us out here talking about our old man grumpy.

Andy, I'll be an old man who disagrees. I think that the fact that they're snipers and elite allows them to jump to conclusions that their experience would provide them that a grunt wouldn't have. So they figure things out really quickly. And because they're elite, that allowed me to believe it.

Okay. I believe that. That's fair. So here's my old man complaint. And again, we'll move on after this. But one of the things, you point out that sketch of his character, we get the little scene of her in the cave, and then we get the little scene of him on the beach. And those are really nice, quick draftings of their characters. But then we, the rest of the movie, when anyone needs to know anything, they just get a long expository monologue or conversation, right? Like, it started to sound old-fashioned, but how about we show, don't tell? And I'll pull an example from our history. So in Dawn of the Dead, the one we watched, 2004, one of the delights of that movie, and the reason I loved the opening so much is it paints a picture of her life without explaining to you flatly what she does, right? You know she's a nurse that is struggling financially, that wants a day off, that doesn't know anything about zombie movies, and the exposition of the zombie world is just happening in the background, and we discover it when she discovers it. And that's more than compelling than sitting down with Sigourney Weaver and being like, so you're alone, you're an elite sniper, so da-da-da, da-da-da, and then laying it all out for us. Does that complaint make sense?

It does, and again, I'll join you in being grumpy. I think elite warrior who is burdened with guilt is just such a strong trope these days that I think they probably didn't think we needed to know anything else about their characters. Yes, yeah. And we don't learn anything else about their characters.

No, we don't, and I'll give another example because I love it so much. If a similar movie, right, they're both high-tension action movies. If you look at the original John Wick film, the plot of John Wick is incredibly simple. A man is mourning, he gets a dog, the dog gets killed, he takes vengeance for everything that's happened to him, right? But the way they set that up with visual montages and references, and it's just such a delightful introduction to the character, who's no more complex than Levi, but it's so much more artfully done than just showing up Levi, having him have a bad dream and then have somebody tell us all about him. So anyway, that's my complaint. I'm done complaining.

All right. No more complaints. I'm going to hold it to you.

Okay. All right. Well, let's get into the movie. Because one thing I love about this movie is very high concept, right? So as soon as we get introduced to them, we don't see Draza arrive, but we'll see the arrival through Levi's eyes. He gets dropped out of the back of a plane in a country, he has no idea where he is, and he's given a map and said, you've got to get to this, we're going to drop you, then you have 38 clicks, 38 kilometers to hike, you got to be there by 1600 tomorrow. There's a scene where he jumps out of the plane and you see him hiking across this countryside, you don't know where he is, and eventually he gets to his location, and it's this tower, it's a little rundown and somebody calls to him. I forget what JD says, I think it's a Shakespeare reference. Maybe I just think that because JD is English.

No, it is a TS. Eliot reference.

Okay, all right. So TS. Eliot is all over this movie. So JD introduces himself, says, man, am I glad to see you. I've been here, you're the first person I've talked to face to face in a year. I am happy to get out of here. And he gives him a little tour. You know, here's the garden, solar-powered backup generator. You know, here's your food. Wild game is plentiful. And then they're having a drink. And JD says, and I'm out of here. You know, first thing tomorrow.

And the aesthetic here is like Cold War bunker, right?

Yes. Yep. It looks, it's a concrete bunker. Some pieces of concrete are missing. It's a little dilapidated. It seems like a relic from the past, for sure.

I love this aesthetic. I love Cold War horror and that sort of brutalist, architectural vibe. Anyway, I'm here for it.

Well, and we'll get right to it. So JD says, I see your counterpart on the other side. I saw some movement over there. So they're probably rotating today, too. And by the way, don't ever contact them. So that's the first rule. But then JD sort of lays it like, JD's been talking about them. They're having a drink. They talk about making potato vodka. And then Levi says, look, I get everything you've told me, but you haven't told me what I'm actually doing here. And here's how he asks the question and how JD responds.

Listen, I'm sorry, man, but I just feel like I'm missing something. So apart from keeping this place a secret, what's the mission? I need to keep people from going in the gorge?

No. You need to stop what's in the gorge from coming out.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's great. Yeah.

He delivers that so well.

Shopa Dirasu is so great in this part because he has a lot of his role is simply expository. He's just got to explain what's happening. But he is so warm and friendly and so good at delivering these lines that we immediately like him and are invested in him with almost no runway to ramp up. You know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely.

And they talk a little longer and I'm going to do two clips in a row, but JD really just lays out the whole thing that's going on here, how we got here. It's a little long clip, but I think we should play it. So what happens is JD throws a high-tech hand grenade into the gorge. You hear it explode in the far distance and then you start to hear this howling sound or this noise. And here's how Levi reacts.

What the hell is that?

That is what we call the Hollow Men. Nobody knows exactly what they are. I don't even know why they're called that.

It's the name of a TS. Elliot poem.

I don't know anything about that. All I know is that someone who had our job called them that a long time ago, and the name stuck. What I can tell you is in the late 1940s, they sent three entire battalions, 2,400 men on horseback into the Gorge to clean it out. Now, not a single man returned.

So that sets up a number of things that become important later, but it also sets up the stakes. This whole time, what is... And JD, we didn't really talk about what JD explained. What did JD tell him he's got to be doing all day?

Yeah, so his job is basically to patrol his side of the Gorge, and his eastern counterpart is presumably doing the same. And what he has to do is basically reload a bunch of, like a chain of automatic mini gun type stations, weapons. And that kind of... That suggests right away, well, if he's reloading them, it means that they're shooting at things on a regular basis, right? So he's got to reload the weapons along the rim of the Gorge, and he's also got to make sure that these cloakers are working and functional. And the cloakers are these big satellite dish looking things that hide the entire area from satellites, which explains maybe why, I mean, they truly are in Terra Incognita here.

Yeah. And I think this is important that what they set up is that the powers, basically East and West, Britain and America, and then Russia on the East, have sort of come up with a pact like this place needs to be guarded, and this is how we're going to do it. And we're not going to tell anyone else. And that it's a big secret, even from the world leaders. JD says at one point, there have been nine Russian heads of state and 13 presidents, and none of them know about this place.

Yes. And there is one kind of warning that JD gives about if the air raid sirens, if things ever go really bad, there's basically a panic button you can hit. And he doesn't explain what really bad means. But he says, you know, if you hear the air raid sirens go off, you have a couple of minutes to get a few miles away.

Yeah. So I think a big part of this movie, and I think we sort of are talking about movies that folded into other movies. This feels like an action, military action movie folded into a love story, right? So Levi sees across the gorge, he sees his counterparts setting up. It's Draza, who we met earlier.

And hey, John, do you want to talk for a minute about what the gorge looks like?

Yeah, I'm sorry. You're right. It's like a small version of the Grand Canyon, but it's very short sort of from end to end. It's very deep. I think at one point, they say it's 500 meters, but you can't see the bottom. It's all covered in mist. But the sides that they're defending are these concrete walls that have like barbed wire and like explosive mines hanging there and all this kind of stuff. So it looks like it's like a moat that you can't see the bottom of between these two towers who are very far apart, hundreds of yards apart.

And The Gorge is in a mountain range too, so around them are mountains.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's just that you can't see anything beyond the peaks of the mountains. They don't even know where they are. What did you think of this look? I, as much as I am a grumpy old man and tired of CGI fests, I think they actually did an effective job portraying sort of a cool and isolated place.

I agree. No complaints here. I was watching with my grumpy old man eyes for the blatant CGI. But the way they do it, well, I'm sure it's heavily CGI. It looks pretty good. So I like the look of The Gorge. I think I would have liked going longer into this movie not knowing what the deal with The Gorge was. Yes. But this movie's choice is to kind of lay it out in the first 20 minutes. You kind of know the basic stakes of this whole movie already.

But the other part that I think is important is, we've seen this all through Levi's eyes, but Draza is over there essentially experiencing the same thing. What they're experiencing is sort of solitude and loneliness. He is over there writing poems, she is over there listening to music, and they don't communicate. I said earlier, there's this distrust of established institutions. There's this great shot of Levi just sitting there eating dinner, and it's like some cut up zucchini and a piece of venison from a deer he shot. Hanging behind him are a tattered American and Union Jack, a British flag, and the whole place just looks tired and run down, and he is there alone. He sighs and eats his meal. There's a real isolation theme here, but also like what am I doing propping up this tired old regime? You know what I mean? Do you get that sense too?

Yeah, and they really hammer the nail into the distrust your corporate masters thing right around now when we learn what happens when JD tries to make his way back out, right?

Yeah, would you tell us what happens to this scene? Because we love JD, and of course, that was to set us up for a painful truth.

Exactly, as soon as the camera went back to JD making his way out, I was like, oh man.

Poor guy, I miss him already.

So having finished his one year of solitary guardianship, JD heads back out to an extraction point, and he's picked up by a helicopter, but his reward for his year of service is to be shot on site, basically. So we now know what the heroes don't, which is that they are not intended to ever come back home after this.

Right, so we know that stakes, they do not.

The secret must be kept.

The secret must be kept. So, and I don't want to brush over the big, huge part of this movie, because I think part of the appeal is that it turns out to be a sort of meet cute romance between Draza and Levi. And Draza initiates it. It's her birthday and she starts listening to the Ramones and dancing around. So, so really we learned that this movie is really about a loyal Russian subject being corrupted by Western decadent music at this point. No.

It's a blitzkrieg bop, right?

It's blitzkrieg bop. And she takes like this speaker and she points it out over the gorge so Levi hears it. And they start communicating on notepads, right? Where they write in big letters, you know, what's your name? And he at first says, we're not supposed to contact, but she quickly gets him to to play along. She's like, it's my birthday.

We should add that the distance between them is so great that they have to use binoculars that zoom in like four times. They have to be able to see each other.

Yeah, they have to use these super high-tech binoculars to zoom in.

But they also know when they're being zoomed in on by the other person. Yes. I guess that's because they're elite snipers.

Yes, exactly. They have a sixth sense. Sixth sense. I found this fun. It was fun and I actually love the movie up in... I hate to say this because it sounds mean. When they're not talking, when there's not some dialogue or they're together, I find the movie more enchanting than when they get together. Does that make sense?

I found this flirty section of the movie really delightful. So they're communicating long distance. Later, they'll be playing chess, long distance, which flash back to Dawn of the Dead, I guess. And it's really fun. I found this charming and they're both charismatic actors.

So I should add the writer. He was influenced by Sidney Pollock, the great director, who said, let me find the quote, a love story is only as good as what keeps them apart.

Oh, that's good. And that makes sense. And in that sense, they really nail it.

And that's what drives this movie.

Yeah.

So it's suggested a couple months go by, basically as they're, and we have to imagine that their relationship is kind of, their bond is kind of growing long distance.

Yes. Now, on her birthday, right? There's loud music playing, they're sort of trading trick shots with their rifles. You know, he's going to ignore her and she shoots his canteen of potato vodka. And he's like, all right. And he shoots her bottle of champagne. And then she jokingly says, hey, shoot that, you know, she holds one and holds it on her head and says, shoot this one. And he's like, come on. And then she gets really serious all of a sudden. And she sort of tells him to look down. She motions for him to look down. And you see these figures crawling up the wall just below his vantage point on the tower. And so this is the first attack of the creatures. And he has his rifle, because he's just shot a bottle of champagne. And he starts shooting them. And then she busts out this giant mini gun from her side of the gorge and starts wailing away at them. And then they start climbing her side. I actually love this part. And it's the first sight we get of what's in the gorge. What is in the gorge?

Well, I first had to say, if you didn't think you could flirt with a sniper rifle, this movie will set you all right.

Yeah, my favorite is like she, he refuses to play this game with her. So she shoots his canteen, and then he looks back to it, and she does like a little curtsy while holding her sniper rifle. It's very funny. Yeah.

So yeah, this is our first glimpse of what I think we are going to call zombies. Is that right?

I think so.

Yeah. And so we don't, at this point in the movie, later in the movie, we're going to get a lot of more close-ups and we'll see what they look like.

Yeah, we do get one good one at this point, though.

Yeah. At this point, we mostly are getting some flashes. They're humanoid, like human-sized creatures trying to scale the wall of the canyon. Yeah. And the quick glimpses we get suggest that they have some sort of a plant-human hybrid. Yes. They reminded me, I'm sorry to say, of Groot is what I kept thinking of. But they look like in The Last of Us, you know how they have the fungus zombies? They look like those, but if instead of fungus, it was like just trees and plants.

Yeah. And there's a sort of old-timey look to them. I felt like they walked out of a British fairy tale about the wild hunt or something, you know what I mean?

They did have a fae feel to them.

Yeah, absolutely. I really like them. So they're exchanging fire and there's all these, they have these mines that they hang down below the catwalks of their towers and the mines explode and all this stuff is happening. And one gets really close to Draza. And when it emerges from the edge, you see its head and it's got a gas mask on with a ram's horn pulling out of one side and it's all gnarly. She screams, she shoots it. Levi starts to shoot it with his minigun across. It explodes, a piece of hot shrapnel goes into her shoulder. It's very exciting. I think it's a good action sequence. What did you think of the design of these creatures up close? I loved it.

So I thought it was great. I mean, I have, it's not the first time we've seen this type of design, I guess. No. I mean, think Groot. But my mind went to, I don't know, maybe this is too nerdy, but Dark Souls 3 has kind of a plant zombie vibe to it. I really like it, though, and I like it in Last of Us, when it's not just reanimated corpses, but they really, they give it like a theme like this. So it all looks really good.

Yeah. So the next thing that happens is, they bind their wounds, they sort of pull themselves back together, time marches on, and it's February and Levi sees Draza crying on, and she, well, first of all, she holds up a sign at the end of this entire dramatic attack, sort of jumping back for a second, that says, best birthday ever, and then collapses. So then, we flash forward a couple of months, during December, he makes a Christmas tree sort of out of spare parts.

There is one little thing that happens in the aftermath of this attack, like the next day or so, they're both like replacing.

Oh, that's right, this is important, yeah.

They're like reloading guns and replacing mines that were detonated. And we do see what looks like a drone rise out of the gorge.

It's like an ion powered jet engine. It's like a piece of futuristic technology.

And so they see it fly off, but we don't know what it is or what its place in the story is yet.

Yeah, it's just like...

But then we move on and it kind of starts, it's a little bit montage-y, kind of moves us a couple months in.

There's a lot of montages in this movie. They montage all the time. So, but we get to February 14th, and as you remember from the beginning of the movie, it's the day her father said, light a candle for me. She's over there crying. Levi sees this. Then he holds up a sign and he says, I think he says, how about dinner tomorrow?

How about dinner tonight?

Oh, how about dinner tonight? That's right. That's right. So, he converts like an RPG rocket launcher to shoot a nylon rope across the gorge. She secures it on her end. She's very excited and he is going to, what do you call it? Not rappel. When you zipline, he's going to zipline across the gorge and meet her and they do this and it's really fun. And he brings her flowers. She says, you smell, you have to go take a shower. I'm not letting you inside. And then she steals his towel. You know, it's all sort of very cute and chased. But they have dinner together. She makes rabbit pie. I want to get to a clip in this scene. But is there anything you wanted to mention about it? I just thought it was fun and charming. And I think part of the love story of the movie that worked well.

Yeah, I agree. I enjoyed this part as well. It's impossible just not to smile at these two characters.

They are very charismatic and humble. They're also sort of, Levi is surprisingly humble and sort of, you know, like it's always hard for me to believe like these perfect square-jawed actors are like insecure, but he has this sort of insecurity or vulnerability, which is really touching too.

So yeah, I will say, you know, thinking about modern zombie movies, you know, we are following the basic rhythm and pace of these films. Yeah, you always get right before things go really bad. Yeah, you often get this montage of like, hey, things are pretty good. You know, like we've got past the initial danger and you'll get a montage scene of like, we're all settling down like in Dawn of the Dead. We had that montage where they're all settling into their life in the mall. And 28 days later, you get some montages of them going around as a group and shopping and stuff. And to me, though, watching these movies, you know, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop because that's where this has to end, right? This beautiful moment won't last.

Yeah, but they do have a somewhat philosophical conversation and Levi starts it. They're just having dinner, a glass of wine, and this is what Levi says.

You know what I keep thinking about night after night while I sit over there on that platform?

Are you going to get to my pants?

Well, after that...

Yes, after that. Sorry, please, tell me. What have you been thinking about?

What's the truth about this place? What's the truth about those holloman down in the gorge?

You know, a long time ago, before I was born, my father was KGB. And years later, when I was a child, he would say to me, uh, Drasa, my little lion, you don't want to know the truth. It's better if you don't know. And I would bitch and whine and say, why daddy? Why don't I want to know the truth?

What did he say?

He would say, because too much truth puts sadness in your heart and madness in your mind.

So there we go, the deep thoughts. This of course leads immediately to romance when people have these kinds of conversations. So they dance. Levi earlier in the film had refused to dance, saying he was a terrible dancer, but they dance and he's actually good. It's their romance scene. They end up having sex, little pinch and squeal here, which is of course blurred out because this is PG-13. They just sort of consummate their relationship in a charming way. I didn't want to add anything here. I just think it works and it has very little to do with zombies, but is a good part of the movie.

Yeah. The only thing I'd add is it's always risky, or at least as a viewer, I always feel nervous when two people get together in a horror movie. Yeah. And here, they are clearly on their own team now, and you can tell that their loyalty lies with each other now and not with their leaders or with the people that sent them to The Gorge.

Exactly.

And I don't know, but this is also a pretty good horror movie set up for one of them to die.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So speaking of which, Levi is like, well, I should go home. So he gets ready and he starts to zipline home. And as he's ziplining, he's looking back at Draza and there's this great shot actually where she is zipping away from him. Like it's just a good shot sort of presaging what's about to happen. And so she sees across the gorge, some of the hollow men are climbing up his side and they set off a mine, which causes his zipline to break. And he plunges into the gorge. And just before he disappears in the mist, she sees his parachute pop out. So there's a montage of her. She grabs a bunch of guns and a parachute. And I actually love this scene where she, she runs out of her armory dressed all in black with her parachute in and without stopping, she just runs and leaps off the edge and then pops her chute. I just thought that was great.

I did not think she's going to jump. I didn't know where she was going.

Yeah. So we don't see Levi land. We see her land. So we get the first experience of The Gorge is from her perspective. She lands in a river. She has to cut herself free. She, of course, immediately drops what's called an auto ascender, which I didn't really understand until later. But basically it's like if you find a rope and you have an auto ascender, it's a winch that will pull you up.

Mon, did you not see Phantom Menace and their ascension guns?

I didn't. I missed. Yeah, I did. I just blocked it out.

Okay. Yeah. Well, that's understandable. I'll say, so I was a little surprised here. So far, they have suggested that a supernatural realm is down here.

Yes.

Maybe even hell.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And so when she lands in a river and it's a creepy down here, but it's not like hell. It's not like overtly supernatural. That's where you start going, there might be a little bit more to this than just, oh, it's a gate to hell down here.

Yes. But she's able to free herself and climb up on the riverbank, and she's sort of resting. Meanwhile, we cut to Levi, who's hanging upside down from his parachute. And a giant skeletal centipede creature detaches itself from the tree he's hanging in and starts to creep down to him, and he's got to shoot it. He drops out of the tree and falls in this pile of blood stuff, and it tries to swallow him. He gets stuck to it and this giant venus flytrap kind of mouth is starting to close over him. But draws it, comes up and shoots away parts of it and helps cut him free. And so now here they are together, armed, competent, and in the mystery world. Can we just pause here? What does this world look like to you? What do you think of it?

Well, to me, it looks like haunted forest, sort of aesthetic, like something out of a fantasy movie where they have to go into the creepy forbidden woods or something. It's really foggy. There's trees all around them. The trees have a lot of...

Skulls and spines and yeah.

The trees are all kind of twisted into like kind of shapes that are suggestive of like human forms. So it's definitely, it feels a little unnatural and creepy and otherworldly.

Yeah, I like, again, I'm still liking the aesthetic here. I think they're doing well. It's intriguing to me. It feels like the outer dark or something like they've fallen into another world, which I'm enjoying.

The Venus flytrap mouth that closes in on him, the jaws of it look like bone, animal bone, even though it's from the roots of the tree.

Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like everything is like human skeletal remains integrated with vegetation and it's all sort of creepy in that way. Yeah, absolutely. Then they're set upon by three people on spectral horses. People? Three, excuse me, three zombies or somethings, three of these sort of wood creatures that are riding skeletal horses, they're set upon, and they all have like cavalry sabers, and they start attacking them. There's a good action scene where they fight them off and one of the horse riders escapes. But the important thing, do you want to say anything about this scene before we get to like the info drop here?

No, I mean, they speculate what the after they survive, and maybe this is what you're about to get into. They speculate, you know, what are they? What do these things want?

Yeah. And Levi makes an observation that sort of lays it out for us here.

This is a military uniform. Old military, first airborne American.

I saw British SAS and Soviet Spetsnaz back there. Post-war.

All these uniforms are from the 1940s. Cavalry on horseback. They're the lost battalions.

They should be long dead, Levi.

So first off, shout out to the sound design on this movie, because not only do you have this moody music by Trent Reisner and his partner like seeping through everything, you also have snarling beasts and gurgles, and it's really good.

I guess we can confirm that what we are dealing with is zombies, right? Yeah.

They never used the word.

They are the animated remains of the soldiers that were sent in, whatever, 60 years earlier to clear up the gorge and disappeared.

I have a quote from the director.

Yes, please.

Well, first of all, he says that one of the films that may have influenced him is The Day of the Triffids, which was directed by Steve Sekulie, who we will see in Revenge of the Zombies in a future episode, so there is a tie-in. But he says the idea of the DNA hybrids of plants and people and that being a horrific and grueling experience for the victims of that.

Yes. These horsemen are angry, right? And Levi suggests that they want them for food. I don't know that I buy that, but they do everything to say, tell me the movie has zombies in it without telling me the movie has zombies in it. You know what I mean? Like, they're cannibalistic, they're reanimated, they never say zombie, but they're clearly zombies with zombie horses, zombie everything. Now, Andy, can we just fall into John and Andy's history podcast really quick? I don't think in the late 40s, a bunch of units would have been cavalry units with sabers.

That occurred to me too. I mean, a general thing, a thing people don't realize about World War II is that horses really were used quite heavily through World War II.

Yeah, for pack animals, to pull cannons, to do all that kind of stuff. But they didn't have cavalry, horse-mounted cavalry units in the same way they did in the First World War.

The only thing I could think is that this is in like a small, undeveloped country or something, where modern technology would have a hard time getting through the terrain. And so they would look to more traditional ways of transport. That's the only thing I could think.

Plus, if they didn't do that, then why would the cavalry sabers, which are delightful, wouldn't have a chance to make it in a movie?

Yeah, I mean, someone drew concept art of a plant zombie riding a horse with a saber, and they had to just hand-wave that into the film somehow, right? Because that's too cool not to use.

Didn't they also say the forces sent were a combination of east and west?

Yes.

So it could be from another country?

Yeah, Russian horsemen could have had cavalry sabers at that time. We don't know. Let's say that's it. But they proceed along. They realize they don't have their auto-ascender. Their original plan was, let's go to the Easter Wall. We'll find my rope, which has fallen into the gorge. Then we'll use your auto-ascender and we'll climb back up. Oh no, my auto-ascender is gone. What are we going to do? Okay, let's just keep going south. The gorge has to let out somewhere. So that's how they start walking. Is that your, follow the river till you find, just like in Lord of the Rings, follow the river and you'll find your way out. Works so great every time.

And it works great in this movie too, honestly.

Well, especially considering the zombies never found that way out.

Yeah, exactly.

It didn't work for them.

Yeah. So they come across an abandoned village, a very creepy, very effective.

I love the abandoned village.

Yeah.

I love, I love just a...

There's like skeletal things climbing up the sides of buildings. And yeah, it's great. The old dilapidated cars and post office boxes. And yeah, it's pretty cool. But they hear some of those horsemen. So they go into a church where they find a bunch of dead bodies, describe this scene to me, Andy. What do we see when we come in here?

Well, we don't see much because... It's so dark... .did I mention this movie is dark? So I was watching this like in the daytime. So the sun was streaming through the window. And I don't know, this is probably tedious to hear, but I really could not see a lot of this section of the movie. But it's a creepy church. There's a lot of kind of corpses in the pews of the church. And they notice that they seem to have killed themselves, committed suicide. And they ponder what would be so bad that killing yourself would be the better option, I guess. And we already know this, of course, because we're watching this movie and we saw the zombies, but.

Yeah, they have a very brief but great exchange about that very subject.

Cyanide.

They chose to do it themselves.

What's worse than death?

This place is evil.

Yeah, so I think they're still trying to give us supernatural vibes here, right? By invoking evil. One of the things in the church is the people in here have padlocked themselves in. And of course, then they leave the church, walk to the edge of the gorge and leave.

They do get attacked in the church.

No, I'm just making a joke. Oh, okay. Sorry.

Sorry. I panicked. I go, did John miss an important point?

No. So they are trying to figure out what to do next. And they realized they're not alone in the church. Who is in the church or what is in the church with them, Andy?

Well, some spider-like creatures.

Yeah.

I kind of imagine the thing from The Thing, maybe, sculling around their spider-like things with some human, with what I think were like human facial features. Is that?

Yeah, like human skulls on their abdomens, you know? Like if a skull was a spider, kind of. Yeah.

This is pretty neat. And then I think some of the corpses either animate and come after them or they come breaking into the church.

They break into the church. And what I find interesting about this is the spiders and the animated plant people who break into the church are not friends. The spiders will attack anybody. And they fight, in addition to fighting the zombified plant people, they have to fight the spiders. And they escape. Draza has like an RPG launcher, and she blows a hole in the back of the church. And she's like, let's go. And they flee together out of the church. It's a good, it's a fun action scene. And from a horror movie standpoint, like as I mentioned earlier, my wife's going to have nightmares about it. So, you know, that's good.

I think those spider creatures are about as horrific as this movie gets. Maybe there's a scene coming up that matches it, but I think we kind of like peak horror movie imagery here.

Yeah, and I don't want to rush through the movie, but we sort of find out everything fairly quickly now.

So one comment about their escape from the church, Sean. So Draza shouts, I'm making a hole, and then shoots her RPG. Is that enough tactical information to tell you... I mean, I think you need to provide a little more information for that to be a worthwhile thing to show. Yes, I agree. I mean, I'm obviously not in the military. I'm not up on my tactical commands.

Yes. So they escape, and they head to the side of the gorge, and they find a door in the wall, and they enter it. And in it, they find a lab that has been abandoned and a generator. So they turn on the generator, there's a movie projector there, and they find a canister of film. It's just sort of laughily expository. It's like, here is a strip of film. There's a woman-

This is like right out of a video game. Video games do this so much.

I got such the video game vibe, where they just need a piece of information about what's really going on here. So they watch this strip of film, and it tells them what's going on here, which is that this city was built as a sort of place to conduct biomedical military experiments. She compares it to the Manhattan Project, and something went wrong.

An earthquake hit.

An earthquake hit, and the sort of chemicals they were working with got free and infected everyone in the town. So I have a comment about this, but do you want to say anything else about this scene before we get to the back room where they find the other lab?

I unironically love this sort of thing where the scientists' last audio journal recording. I mean, I love this as a trope. It is pretty funny that they stumble across it here. Yeah, the scientists, so they learn from this a couple of things, though, and I don't want to get ahead of you, John. They learn from the scientists in the film that if you've only been exposed for a few hours, you have hope of survival. But after that, you are going to start transforming and the scientist holds up her shirt or something and you see that she started this metamorphosis.

And she says, a few hours versus days. So it's a big window between when you're safe and when you're not.

From this, they take the timeline of like six or seven days and that's treated as like, as Bible for the rest of this film. If we're okay after six days, we're totally fine then.

But I wanted to jump in here. We said, you know, one of the themes of this show is that horror movies are about what society is scared about or struggling with at the time. And like literally here in the middle of this movie, we've discovered that this infection that is so horrible, we have to keep people trapped in a gorge and people have to isolate themselves, like Draza and Levi, is caused from a lab experiment. It's not to put too fine a point on, it's a lab leak in the middle of this city, right? Does that make sense?

It does, and again, I don't want to get in front of you, but I was just thinking about all the zombie movies I've seen, all the ones we watched for this podcast, and then a lot of more recent ones that we haven't gotten to yet, and it makes me wonder, is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a zombie film, humanity's culpability for creating the zombies in the first place? And does that set them apart from traditional horror? We didn't do anything to cause Dracula to appear, right? And we didn't do anything maybe to cause Freddy Krueger or the alien to start hunting us down. But I feel like-

Well, Freddy Krueger were those parents, right?

Well, yeah, I mean, they all have their little backstories. But I feel like zombie movies very often are kind of indicting humanity for its own role in its destruction.

Yeah, like another, the other premium example here is 28 Days Later, where at the beginning of the movie, they break in and they release these animals that have been infected with this rage virus, and that's how the virus gets out. But yeah, I just found this so topical and interesting. So, but that's not the only lab. As we often see in our zombie movies, there's a secret lab behind the regular lab. So they go into another lab, and there's a computer from the 2000s with a keyboard and everything, but that just turns right on, which is great. And on the screen, what do we see? The logo of the company.

It's a logo for a company called Dark Lake.

Yeah, I just, I mean, I know we're trying to just be obvious and tell the story of this movie, but just pro tip to like evil corporations out there, bright cloud is a better name than Dark Lake if you're trying to, for a brighter future. You know, like I think these are things we can solve.

Later an evil corporate helicopter will appear and it's got Dark Lake flashed across its side. It's like, come on, branding people.

Yeah, and it's painted black. So anyway, but Levi lays this whole thing out and he says, Dark Lake, he's heard of them. They're a paramilitary organization and he's just gonna tell us why, you know, one of the questions of the movie is, why just have two solitary people with all these mini guns? Like, why not just dump a bunch of bombs in there or something? You know, it seems like a better choice. And I assume that like, well, it's some sort of supernatural thing, so bombs aren't gonna matter or something. No, that's not the case, because Dark Lake is involved. Here's what Levi figures out.

Dark Lake, paramilitary. They haven't bombed The Gorge because they're still studying what's in it. We're not working for the military. They used all this to set up their research drones. Dark Lake is a huge corporation specializing in genetic research. Their drones are collecting hybrid DNA samples. They're building super soldiers.

What's the mother of all secrets?

It always comes down to super soldiers, doesn't it?

Yeah, I was going to say. Well, I was a little disappointed by the super soldiers. You know what I mean? Like, the movie has to have a plot, and it has to be solvable.

Dream bigger, evil corporations.

Yes, this is also the plot of Alien Romulus, by the way. So, which, oh, wait, one of the, either the writer or director worked on Alien Romulus, didn't they?

It just came out in the last year.

Oh, that's right, that's right. But it's the same, it's the same plot, right? They're using alien DNA. Sorry, spoilers for Alien Romulus. They're using the DNA from the aliens.

This isn't crazy here, John, calm down.

Yeah, so they set this up. Now, let's pause here. So, you know, this definitely feels like, oh, it's a big corporation and the big corporation is lying to us, and they're committing crimes against humanity, all for their own profit. That is definitely a theme that is strong in this movie. As the filmgoer is a zombie fan, who prefers sort of fantasy or mystical stuff to science fiction, I was a little disappointed that it was so simple.

It's just such a well-worn path. Yes. The evil corporation is behind it and is trying to leverage this unholy technology for its own financial benefit. I mean, it works. It obviously resonates with all of us. We get it. I mean, personally, I feel this more strongly now than ever I have in my entire life. But it is a little disappointing when you learn out. It's just about another movie where it turns out that it's just really about corporate profits.

Yeah. And can I just make a comparison as to how long we've been having this conversation? So Gordy Weaver's breakout role in 1979 was the movie Alien, in which a giant corporation was trying to get them to collect an alien for research purposes. Her most recent role in 2025 is about a giant corporation. The only difference is she's the victim of the corporation and the first one in this movie, she's in charge of it. So, but they go back, right?

Oh, while they were rooting through those files.

Oh, I forgot a huge action scene too. Sorry, go ahead.

Did you? Okay, well, they figured out what happens when you hit the red panic button.

That's right.

There is a nuke, and it actually, I love it because later they pass it. It's one of these like real early Cold War, like Manhattan Project nukes. It's like, yeah, it's an actual giant bomb that like at the top of a silo that drops down. And so basically, there is a switch here to nuke this entire gorge in the event of a like breakout. So as soon as that pops on the scene, you have a pretty good idea of how the movie is going to end.

Yeah, so after making these discoveries, they decide they have to get out. They find in a garage, I always said it was a Willys Jeep at first, but it's actually a combination between a Jeep and a Half-Track. I don't actually think this vehicle ever existed.

I was wondering that too. I'm not like a Cold War vehicle stuff.

Yeah, as the nerd who builds military models, I'm like, this is not a thing. So anyway, but they drive it out. They're escaping. They drive fast. The creatures chase them. They find the rope. They find the original rope that Levi was using to zipline across, and they tie it to the winch of this Jeep, and they're using it to pull themselves up the side of the gorge, which they say is like 500 meters. And so the action scene here, which was probably my least favorite action scene, is they're fighting over all the zombie plant people who are trying to stop them, and there's bombs, and they stab the kerosene, and they whatever. I don't know if you want to say more about this, but-

Not really. I mean, so it is the idea of winching the Jeep up the side of the canyon is a good one. That's a cool idea. Just to put on my grumpy old man hat, like when you make, when the action scene you set up just defies like physics and reality, it's impossible for you to make it tense, I think, no matter how many CGI plant zombies, climb up the cable behind them and attack them. This is a point where the movie drifted out of whatever horror spot it was in and just into like, you know, this could have just been a scene in any recent James Bond movie or something like that. This doesn't even look real. But they winch up the side of the, they winch mostly up the side of it. And did you notice that just handwaves away that they're going to have to climb the remaining like 100 meters or something. It's like this sheer cliff. But anyway.

So they make it to the top, they patch each other's wounds. They realized that they should quarantine for five days. This is the magic number that they heard in the strip of film in the lab. From the scientist who started a huge mess. So I'm sure they're right and trustworthy. But they have a conversation that sort of puts a bow on what they have to do to finish out this movie. So they sort of ask, what do we do now? And here's what they decide to do.

We could run. I know a place in France and we could be safe there. For as long as we want.

Draca, I want to leave with you. More than anything in the world. But what about this place? What about the next pair of soldiers that they bring in here and inherit their secrets and their lies?

Rambèpry Hallimann is a contaminant. So if one of them gets out...

We need to destroy The Gorge.

So that's how this movie is going to end. I forgot, there is an action scene we brushed past. We don't know to go over it in detail. But at one point, Draca gets captured by one of the plant zombies. There's a fight, she escapes. But they realize that that plant zombie was Captain Bradford, who was the original guard of this place.

In that conversation, they also... I forget what you wanted to say. But they basically say, if we're infected, we'll each do what needs to be done. Suggesting that they will kill themselves or each other. I want to ask you, John, at this point, I felt like we were at the point where you could go either way. Did you think this movie was going to end happily with them escaping? Or did you think one of them was infected and we were going to get that classic zombie like putting down your loved one scene?

I, based on the fact that this is an action movie and a love story before it's a zombie movie, I guess I assumed they were going to make it.

Yep, I thought so, too. This movie is, like you say, at this point, it feels very much more like an action movie to me than a horror film.

Yeah, so all the Chekhov's whatevers have been seen. Chekhov's atom bomb, Chekhov's satellite dish, Chekhov's diagram that says 4.2 kilometers away, like all of these pieces, right?

Chekhov's like five days to clear the infection.

Exactly, so everything they've led out to the movie is very simple. So their plan is they're going to destroy, they're gonna use their incredible sniper superpowers to destroy from a distance these satellite dishes. If the satellite dishes go down, the cloaker goes down, which signals the atom bomb to go off. So, they're gonna wire all this stuff, they're gonna shoot it with their guns, like they'll put a bomb on it or something, wire them to all explode, and then they're going to escape. So, this is the plan. Now, it's complicated by Sigourney Weaver and her team, which is two people. Sigourney Weaver's like, they've been compromised. Sigourney Weaver knows they've been in The Gorge, even though Levi has denied it in his radio check-in. She knows, so they're gonna come in a helicopter.

She knows, because she has a photo of the two of them together.

Yes, in front of the computer.

In her tower, yeah. Was it down in the lab?

I wasn't sure where that photo was.

It's in the lab. When they're looking at the computer that says Dark Lake on it, that's what she's seeing. She's seeing Levi looking into the computer screen and draws a, like, looking over his shoulder. So I think that's where that's from. Yep. He lies and tries to say, no, we haven't been in The Gorge. I haven't had any contact. She's like, let's go. And I'm coming with you, which is fine by me, though it seems really odd and pointless. So they get in their black helicopter that says Dark Lake on the side and fly to The Gorge. Meanwhile, Levi and draws are setting up this whole bomb thing.

And I mean, I don't know if we want to go into detail here, but this is one of those movie things where I felt the movie was just like, just trust us. They're doing, they're setting this all, they're rigging this all to blow up. Because I didn't really understand what they were doing. But yeah.

So they go up into the woods, they line up their sniper shots, while Sigourney Weaver and her Black Ops team are in the bunker looking around. They find the quote that Levi left, which is a quote from the Buddha, which I don't even recall.

It was like, what can't remain hidden? It's like the sun, the moon and lies or truth or something.

The truth.

Yeah, and I have to say, there is one lovely piece here that I skipped over completely. When Levi first gets to the bunker, he discovers behind the bookshelf, everyone who's been there before him has written a piece of poetry on one of the cinder block walls, and there's the first one and he find JD's quote, and so I actually like this. I'm sorry I didn't bring it up earlier, but just something I want to mention.

Yeah, I thought this was good.

So he writes his own. So when Sigourney Weaver and her team are in Levi's bunker, they discover all these quotes. She reads it aloud, then Levi and Draza start shooting, and the satellite dishes explode, and Sigourney Weaver says, the cloakers are gone, we have to get out of here, because she knows that when those are gone, the atom bomb is going to go to hide. Isn't it safe dog? It's something.

It's stray dog.

Stray dog, that's it. So the final protocol to blow up the atom bomb is stray dog.

There was a little action scene, not very remarkable, where like the spec ops soldiers and send out some drones and stuff to try and kill.

Oh, yeah. It's so remarkable. I forgot about it. Because I kept thinking the amount of weight you would have to carry to fire a minigun on a drone, A, would be impossible, and B, it would just flip around in circles when it was firing. So anyway, sorry.

But it looks cool.

It looks cool. I'm sorry.

The only important takeaway there is that Levi gets wounded fighting those drones. And that's going to slow him down as he and Draza are separated. So they have to make their own separate escapes away from the blast zone.

Right.

But will Levi make it in his wounded state?

And they have to escape to like 4.6 miles or something?

Yeah, they have to make it 4.2 kilometers.

Right. And the fun part about that is they've established one of the longest shots ever was made by Draza, and it's 3.8 kilometers. But in order to have their plan work, they have to make a shot that's 3.9 kilometers, and then run the last 0.3 kilometers to get to the safety zone. So that's the tension at the very end here that we're talking about. Just to do the math for everybody.

That's right. It's more compelling to watch than to hear it described.

Yes. Yes. But satellites go off, the atom bomb goes off, Sigourney Weaver's helicopter crashes.

I was bummed that we didn't get a good like, no or something from Sigourney Weaver. Yeah.

And I would have liked, I mean, she's so good, I would have liked a good villain speech. Like, you know, Levi, you think you're so smart, you think you've got it all figured out. Well, let me tell you, I've thought of everything. Like, I would have loved to see that from her character.

Agreed. If anyone deserves to just milk the scenery in a role like this at Sigourney Weaver.

For sure.

For sure. And then have a zombie wizard hand grab her and pull her down.

That would have been perfect. Yeah. You know, hoisted by her own petard as they say.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the usual ways these movies end is that the bad guy gets swarmed by the zombies and bitten or something like that. Yeah. But here she just gets wiped out in the nuclear blast.

So they escape. So then we cut to Draza in like a cave, and she's marking the days, right? Five days, five boxes. She's just living there. After five days, she leaves. She goes to a place, the place in France.

Because the five days indicates she's clean.

She's clean. She's not contaminated. She won't pass this along to anybody. She goes to like this hill in France, which I think is the place they discussed meeting. She waits there all day. He doesn't show up. So she goes somewhere in France and she becomes a waitress. She's working in the south of France as a waitress. She's sad. She's lonely again. And then who should sit at a table and order some rabbit pie? It's Levi. He has survived. And they kiss and the movie ends.

John, were you sobbing uncontrollably by this point in the movie?

I was not. I'm sorry. I sound cold-hearted.

Was your wife?

No. No. I think my wife was too traumatized by the spider skull zombie creatures too. So let's talk about it.

Yeah. We've made our way through another film. John, we usually go through our list of questions. Shall we do that now? Yes. All right. This one, we're going to get different answers than we've been getting from these 30s and 40s films. John, is there a hero party in this?

There is 100 percent a hero party in this.

Yep.

Personally, may we throw JD in the hero party just because I like him so much?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Yep.

And we already talked that this is not only a hero party, but almost a superhero party, I would say. Right. How does the party do? How many survive?

Two of them. JD does not make it. He's not killed by zombies though. He's killed by the evil machinations of his fellow man.

That's right. Is there a zombie horde?

Yes. They're climbing up the side of the gorge repeatedly. They get shot by giant machine guns with tracer rounds. Like, yeah, it's not, nobody's playing around here. Yeah.

Is the world threatened?

The world is threatened. And I want to, can we stop and talk about the world being threatened? Because when I made these pillars originally, right, there's, and we'll get to them, but apocalypse, contagion, tough moral choices, loved ones turning against you. The first one is apocalypse. The assumption I made is that we were working towards the theory of zombie movies where the world has ended, right? And there's an apocalypse. That doesn't happen here. There could be apocalypse, it's averted. So I feel like in a sense, we're moving into like a post-apocalypse zombie world. Like we've jumped ahead in our evolution. Like this is more of a response to Dawn of the Dead from 2004 than it is anything we've seen. So it's like the idea of a post-apocalypse, non-apocalypse zombie movie, which is interesting.

Somewhere in the evolution of zombie movies, we're going to hit a long stretch where zombie movies are like bleak and nihilistic. And the only victory that can be achieved is like a couple of you survive to face another hellish day, right?

Yeah. And what's interesting to me about that is that I thought that's the evolution we were tracking. We're tracking the evolution to that point. But that's a point in the road of zombie movies. And now we've got another point that I'm thinking about, if that makes sense.

Well, I think also this has got to spring somewhat. This is really a hybrid movie. It's a zombie horror movie, but it's a very, it's a action-romance movie at the same time. And action-romance do not go with like bleak endings.

Correct.

So, okay, let's move on with our questions. What kind of zombie strain are we looking at? And is there, are there any new strains in here?

I would like to argue no. We are looking at sort of a plant-based sort of fungal zombie, not unlike The Girl with All the Gifts. And combined with a mad scientist zombie. These are ultimately mad scientist zombies. It is a mash-up of two things we've seen before. And I don't know how fresh it is to you, but I feel like this is the sort of culmination of a lot of different ideas about how zombies come about and mash together.

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think you're right. I'd agree with that. These didn't, I thought that the visual presentation of them was interesting and fresh. Yep. But there's nothing new about, like, what they are, how they came about, or what their plans are for the world, right?

I will say one of the new things is the zombie horses, like zombie animals we haven't seen yet.

That was interesting. And the spiders, too. Yeah, I mean, so there is this suggestion, even though the things that threaten them are mostly the humanoid zombies, you know? We do get these glimpses of this whole ecosystem that is forming, this twisted ecosystem with human DNA in it and DNA from animals and plants.

So that is new, I will say, to us.

That's pretty interesting, I guess. You know, it reminded me a little bit of Girl with All the Gifts, where you see how the zombies, like the next stage of their life cycle as they're all kind of...

Yes, but even there, there's still cannibals who are eating animals and stuff, and here they're all sort of integrated together.

And they're sort of terraforming Earth to be a native environment for themselves. So if this got out, you could imagine Earth being blanketed by this sort of thing and a whole ecosystem. That said, I don't think that that's really new here, and we've seen that before.

Yeah.

All right, so John, let's go through those four pillars of the zombie movie that you mentioned. John, is there an apocalypse?

There is not, if we say, apocalypse in the sense of the whole world ending. It's threatened, but it doesn't happen. Now, there's a local apocalypse. This small village is destroyed in an apocalypse. So it's like a zombie apocalypse, but just in The Gorge. Yeah.

Is there a contagion? Is the zombie menace spread by contagion?

Yes. It's spores or something. It's not biting or injury. You become a zombie by inhaling something.

Can I say that this movie's iteration of the contagion is less effective because the rules of it are so fuzzy?

Yes.

You don't really know, like in whatever, you're Dawn of the Dead. If you're bitten, you're going to be a zombie. That's the rules. And so when you know whether you're bitten or not, you understand what the stakes are for you. Yeah.

Without clear rules for contagion, then you don't have that undercuts tough moral choices and loved ones turning against you.

Exactly. And in this movie, it's like, well, we're infected, but as long as we kind of don't stick around too long, we'll probably be fine. You know, that's too vague for there to be a real stake attached to it.

Yeah.

It does make it easier to write a sequel or prequel.

It sure does.

All right. Are there tough moral choices?

I think so. They have to choose to set off an atom bomb to solve this menace. I consider setting off an atom bomb a tough choice. Maybe not, maybe not, but yeah. So I'd say yes, but not in the way we meant, right? Which is you have to choose who lives and who dies in your hero party.

Yeah. I think I'd agree with that. I mean, yeah, they make some tough moral choices. They choose to turn against their employers and do the right thing and risk their lives. But again, it doesn't feel like quite the same moral choices that we think of in the zombies. And lastly, do loved ones turn against you?

Not really, though I think the fact that they run into Captain Bradford, who had a framed portrait in Levi's bunker, is kind of a suggestion, like somebody you could rely on can become one of these things. So, but they don't turn against each other. You know, JD doesn't come back as a zombie.

I was going to say, I was surprised JD did not appear as a zombie in this film. Yeah, yeah.

So I think, I mean, it's there, but it's not particularly strong.

Yeah, I think I agree with that. Okay, John, would you or I survive in this zombie world?

Absolutely not. So first of all, I would not be selected as an elite sniper, but let's just say I was. I don't think I would have survived the fall into the gorge. I don't think I would have survived the zombies attacking me. I think you have to be a superhero to beat these guys.

Yeah, I agree. Our heroes beat these zombies because they're superheroes. There's absolutely no way I would last more than 30 seconds.

Would you have grenade launch a rope across the gorge to go meet the woman in the other tower?

Probably.

I mean, it's Anya Taylor-Joy.

And if it were my wife, I definitely would have, honey. So, yeah, I would.

All right. Very well. And then, John, do we recommend this movie to zombie movie fans and listeners of this podcast?

I'm going to say yes. I think it's interesting. It's entertaining enough. Some of it is very sort of ham-fisted. It's too expository, but I enjoyed it at the end of the day.

I would give it a very weak recommendation. Yeah. It's a fine film. If you're a zombie nerd, there's nothing in here really that you need to see that you haven't seen elsewhere.

But it's a good one for a Saturday night.

Yeah. But it's a perfectly fine movie, and it's a movie you can watch with your significant other who doesn't like horror movies, right?

Yeah. But I do like it as a cultural artifact. I love the high concept of the two snipers saving the world in these isolated spots. I do love what it has to say about the world of isolation and institutional distrust that we're experiencing right now. So I think that's interesting, but that's not super bold and at the front. So I do like it because of that too.

Yeah. I think I'd agree. All right, John, well, we're to the scariest part of each episode, and that's where we learn what we're watching next.

Now, in Producer Brad's Defense, we did get Shaun of the Dead followed by a modern movie, The Gorge. So I feel like we're on a streak here.

That's true, but I mean, whatever is waiting for us can't be good.

Yeah, it can't be a step up, can it?

Two weeks in a row where we watched a fun movie, we would have watched out of our own.

Well, no streak lasts forever. We are going back to the 40s, and if you check your chat for the poster.

Here we go. It is King of the Zombies with Dick Purcell, Joan Woodbury and Montan Moreland. Montan Moreland is back.

Oh, fantastic.

What does this poster look like, Andy? What are we looking at here?

Well, this poster looks like a lot of the other posters we've seen. We have a green colored image in the top corner of a zombie master hypnotist mesmerist looking person.

Yeah.

And then we have, what I imagine are the two romantic leads, clutching each other and holding a candle and looking fearfully off to the side.

So, and it's monogrammed pictures again, so we know it'll be super high budget.

You know, one thing we should talk about doing is bringing in someone who's a specialist in movie posters because we often talk about the colors of these and I don't know if these are true to how they were printed or if they've aged.

I would be curious about that.

If you know anyone who fits that bill, that'd be awesome.

Yeah.

I think it'll be fun to have that discussion.

Absolutely. So thank you for joining us for The Gorge and we'll see you next episode for King of the Zombies. Thanks everybody. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend, follow us on Instagram at Zombie Strains. All of this helps like-minded people find the show. See you next time.