It’s a tried and true tradition for horror movies to debut on Valentine’s Day weekend, and this year, Apple TV+ and Skydance got in on the action with their original film The Gorge, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Miles Teller, and Sigourney Weaver. While this mutant-laden film is a fun ride, it loses itself once it pivots from “weird romance” to “formulaic action-thriller.”
The Gorge’s basic premise is that a former Marine and elite sniper, Levi (Teller), is hired by what appears to be an elite military operation to man a watchtower over a massive, fog-covered gorge somewhere in the northern hemisphere. Directly opposite his position is another watchtower manned by an Eastern European operative, Drasa (Taylor-Joy). Levi gets a rundown from his predecessor that includes as much information as he needs to help contain “the hollow men” (named for the T.S. Eliot poem) in the gorge, a mission that’s held strong through a secret agreement between eastern and western powers since World War II, as well as a simple rule: No contact with the other side.
Before this, we see Drasa say goodbye to her father, who has terminal cancer and plans to die by suicide on Valentine’s Day if his illness doesn’t kill him first. She has to go dark for at least a year, and he tells her that wherever she is, she can light a candle for him on February 14 and say goodbye. It’s a heartbreaking sendoff into an incredibly isolating mission, and it plays a major role in how Drasa’s story progresses.
She says goodbye to the last person who cares if she lives or dies before deploying to the gorge. Levi has no one to say goodbye to and seems fine—if not content—to spend the year alone. So when Drasa fires a shot to get his attention on the night of her birthday in November and holds up a large, handwritten greeting from her watchtower à la Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me” music video, Levi initially rejects her by reminding her of the no-contact rule. She won’t have it, insisting that it’s her birthday and she’ll do what she wants, and the pair exchange names and almost immediately begin to flirt.
That first interaction is cut short by a sudden uprising of the hollow men from the gorge, who climb up the walls of the canyon and nearly infiltrate the watchtowers. It quickly becomes apparent why the no-contact rule is in place. Distractions of any kind could risk the containment strategy failing, and that could spell disaster for the entire world.
But once Drasa and Levi start talking, they don’t stop—and so a surprisingly sweet, very compelling romance is born. They build snowperson versions of each other, raise toasts with vodka made in their respective distilleries, and walk the perimeter of the gorge together. Despite the visible distance between them, Teller and Taylor-Joy have incredible chemistry from the jump, which is largely due to how fully these performers commit to the bit. Yearning for someone you can see but not touch certainly isn’t a new concept, but its application in The Gorge feels refreshing and compelling because of how high-stakes and strange it is.
When they eventually have physical contact, that chemistry blooms. The constant tension of their mission, juxtaposed with their clear desire to get lost in each other, makes everything that much more intense. It’s hard not to root for these two to have a happy ending despite every indication that they won’t, for any number of awful reasons.
Had The Gorge stuck more strictly to the romance, it would overall be a much better film. Unfortunately, once Levi and Drasa become physically intimate, the movie pivots to a strict action-thriller and becomes almost distressingly predictable.
More often than not, developing a true romance plot in an action-adventure or thriller is hard to do because the bonds formed between characters in these situations feel so fraught that there’s never any time for them to consider their feelings or make informed decisions. With death lurking around every corner, someone falling for the person who’s fighting the apocalypse alongside them becomes something of an inevitability, even if they wouldn’t feel a connection in literally any other circumstance.
Because The Gorge spends so much time establishing the relationship between Levi and Drasa, allowing them to have messy feelings, make mistakes, and be goofy together, their romance develops much more naturally. Their intimacy feels earned rather than forced, and their willingness to put everything on the line for one another makes sense.
The problem isn’t that they’re trying to save the world together. It’s that the way the world could end feels like it’s already been done to death. In the final act of the film, The Gorge feels like a bizarre remix of Annihilation with some cut-and-paste scenes from Captain America: The Winter Soldier thrown in. Even with unique mutant designs and beautiful set work, everything begins to feel too familiar to truly hold the audience’s attention.
By the end of The Gorge, I found myself wishing that the final act of the film had been cut shorter or cut out altogether and that the romance had been the sole focus. One could argue that it is the sole focus, but there’s such a long jaunt into paramilitary conspiracies that the chemistry between Teller and Taylor-Joy gets sidelined to the detriment of the film’s pacing and overall storytelling. A stronger approach would have been to make physical intimacy even harder to achieve or to establish additional stakes that made it harder for them to connect initially rather than throwing them in the deep end to test their bond once it was already formed.
The Gorge is absolutely worth watching for the romance, but don’t go into it expecting mind-blowing action or unique thrills.
Published: Feb 19, 2025 1:22 PM UTC