The Gorge: Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller’s Sci-Fi Romance Thriller Hits Apple TV+

The Gorge: A Sci-Fi Romance That Shoots for the Stars (and Occasionally Misses)

Ah, the gorge. Not that kind of gorge—though you might feel a queasy mix of awe and nausea watching Scott Derrickson’s latest, a film that swings wildly between Romeo and Juliet with sniper rifles and Annihilation with a side of T.S. Eliot fan fiction. Let’s just say, if you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like to fall in love while fending off tree-root zombies, The Gorge has you covered.

Star-Crossed Snipers and the Abyss Between Them
Picture this: Anya Taylor-Joy, all sharp angles and sharper aim, perched in a Soviet-era watchtower. Across a fog-choked ravine, Miles Teller’s Levi—a brooding ex-Marine with a poet’s soul and a cowboy’s swagger—scrawls love notes on whiteboards like a lovesick Morse code. Their mission? Guard a gaping chasm that supposedly houses “Hollow Men” (yes, those Hollow Men, complete with literary pretensions). Their real job? Making us believe two people can flirt via bullet trajectories and chess games played across a geological divorce.

I couldn’t help but chuckle when Drasa (Taylor-Joy) blasts the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” into the void—a cheeky nod to Derrickson’s horror roots and a reminder that even elite assassins need a birthday jam. But here’s the rub: Their courtship, equal parts Love Actually and Call of Duty, teeters between charming and cringe. Imagine Mr. & Mrs. Smith if they’d met on Tinder… during a monster apocalypse.

The Gorge Itself: A Character in Search of a Better Script
Derrickson, fresh from Doctor Strange’s kaleidoscopic wizardry, paints the titular abyss as a thing of eerie beauty—a misty maw framed by brutalist towers that scream Cold War paranoia. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen (The Shape of Water) bathes the landscape in sickly greens and blood-red hues, as if the gorge itself is a living, breathing entity. And then there are the creatures: skeletal “Hollow Men” that claw their way up the cliffs like Groot’s evil cousins, their roots tangling into nightmares. It’s The Last of Us meets Pirates of the Caribbean’s Davy Jones crew, though the CGI occasionally veers into PlayStation 3 cutscene territory.

But here’s where The Gorge stumbles. Just as you’re settling into the slow-burn romance—the binocular glances, the chess matches, the poetry scribbled between gun reloads—the film plunges headfirst into the ravine. What follows is a chaotic third act of adhesive vines, skull spiders, and Sigourney Weaver’s glorified cameo as a bureaucrat with a God complex. It’s as if Derrickson suddenly remembered, “Oh right, this is a monster movie,” and crammed a decade of Resident Evil plot twists into 40 minutes.

Taylor-Joy and Teller: Chemistry Amid the Chaos
Let’s be clear: Without its leads, The Gorge would collapse faster than a soufflé in a earthquake. Taylor-Joy, all wide-eyed intensity and questionable Lithuanian vowels, turns Drasa into a lethal pixie dream girl. Teller, meanwhile, channels his inner Clint Eastwood—stoic, wounded, and weirdly poetic. Their chemistry crackles best in silence: a shared smirk after a kill shot, a dance to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs under a moonlit hellscape. It’s when they actually talk that the magic fizzles. (Note to screenwriters: “The gorge is exposed!” is not an Oscar-worthy line).

Should You Stream It?
If you’re craving a film that’s equal parts ridiculous and romantic—a Twilight for the Call of Duty generation—The Gorge delivers. Sure, the plot holes are canyon-sized, and the finale feels like a studio note gone rogue. But hey, where else can you watch Furiosa and Rooster from Top Gun slow-dance between monster attacks? Pour a glass of wine, mute your logic meter, and let Trent Reznor’s synth-heavy score carry you through.

The Gorge streams exclusively on Apple TV+—because nothing says “date night” like shared trauma and adhesive root systems.

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