# The Gorge (film)

The Gorge is a 2025 American science fiction romantic action film directed by Scott Derrickson and written by Zach Dean. It stars Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Sigourney Weaver. Teller and Taylor-Joy portray two elite snipers who are ordered to guard a deep gorge without knowing what lies inside. It was released on Apple TV+ on February 14, 2025.

## Plot

Two elite snipers receive identical missions: guarding opposite sides of a remote, top-secret gorge for one year without any contact with their counterparts or the outside world. Levi Kane, a former U.S. Marine Scout/Sniper, is recruited by the mysterious Bartholomew to guard the west tower. Drasa, a Lithuanian covert operative frequently employed by the Kremlin, guards the east tower. Levi suffers from PTSD-induced nightmares, while Drasa's terminally ill father plans to die by suicide on Valentine's Day.
Levi relieves his predecessor J.D., a former British Royal Marine corporal, who explains that the location is kept hidden by powerful cloaking antennas, and the towers are armed to contain monstrous creatures within the gorge, nicknamed "The Hollow Men". J.D. warns of "Straydog", an unknown emergency protocol, and that battalions of soldiers sent into the gorge in the late 1940s never returned. Believing he is being exfiltrated, J.D. is instead killed on Bartholomew's orders.
After several uneventful weeks, Drasa violates the no-communication protocol on her birthday, engaging Levi in conversation via written signs and a sharpshooting competition. A wave of Hollow Men attempt to climb out of the gorge, but Drasa and Levi utilize their marksmanship, automated turrets, and mines to defend their towers and each other. They continue to bond from afar, playing chess and making improvised drum sets.
Six months into their posting, Levi ziplines across the gorge to have dinner with Drasa. They spend a romantic night together, and he reveals that he is writing a poem for her. The next morning, as Levi returns to his tower, his cable snaps when mines are detonated by Hollow Men, forcing him to parachute into the gorge. Arming herself, Drasa parachutes after him.
The pair discover that all plant and animal life within the gorge has been cross-mutated, including the Hollow Men, revealed to be the missing soldiers from decades past. Fighting off the hostile lifeforms, Drasa and Levi find the source of the mutations: a World War II bioweapons research lab, abandoned after an earthquake caused a contaminant leak that produces symptoms within five days. The facility has since been maintained by Darklake, a private defense corporation extracting hybrid samples in hopes of creating super soldiers.
Drasa and Levi discover "Straydog" is the original fail-safe protocol to sterilize the site with a nuclear explosion. They find a working Jeep with a towing winch, using it to climb out of the gorge as they fight off the Hollow Men, and agree to separate for five days to ensure they are not infected with the mutagens. During Levi's monthly radio check-in, Bartholomew admits that she works for Darklake and orders him to kill Drasa. Aware that the two snipers have discovered the truth, Bartholomew dispatches a team to eliminate them both.
Bartholomew and her men arrive to find the towers abandoned, as Drasa and Levi outgun the armed drones sent after them and destroy the cloaking antennas, exposing the site to surveillance and triggering "Straydog's" detonation. Bartholomew and her men are killed in the blast and the area is destroyed, while Drasa is separated from Levi and completes her five-day self-quarantine.
She reaches France to rendezvous with Levi, who does not appear, and discovers that he left her the completed poem. A month later, Drasa has begun a new life, working in a local restaurant. She is surprised by the arrival of Levi, who was delayed by an injury, and they kiss.

## Cast

* Miles Teller as Levi Kane
* Anya Taylor-Joy as Drasa
* Sigourney Weaver as Bartholomew
* Sope Dirisu as J.D.
* William Houston as Erikas

## Production

Zach Dean wrote a spec script for The Gorge that was later voted onto the Black List of the most-liked unproduced screenplays in 2020. In March 2022, Scott Derrickson was set to direct and produce the film alongside Skydance Media. In August, Miles Teller was cast to star, as well as serve as an executive producer. In October, Anya Taylor-Joy joined the cast, and Apple Original Films signed on. Sigourney Weaver was added to the cast in March 2023.
The film includes a scene where the characters bond across the gorge, with the two playing chess and banging on improvised drum sets, recalling iconic breakout roles of the actors, as a chess prodigy in The Queen's Gambit (2020) for Taylor-Joy, and as a drummer in Whiplash (2014) for Teller. According to Teller and Taylor-Joy, the scenes were not written for them specifically, but were in the script prior to their being cast. They felt it was a bit on the nose considering their histories, and tried to get them changed, but Derrickson insisted the scene remain.
Filming began in March 2023 in London, with production occurring at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, where the tower interiors were built on a stage. The Rauma River in Norway served as the location for the forest and gorge exteriors, while Llandudno in Wales stood in for Èze in France.

## Release

The Gorge had its world premiere at the AMC Theatres at The Grove in Los Angeles on February 13, 2025, with the cast and crew in attendance. The film was subsequently released for streaming exclusively on Apple TV+ on February 14, 2025. It became Apple TV+'s biggest launch for a movie ever, surpassing Wolfs starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

## Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 64% of 137 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "Mixing multiple genres, The Gorge makes for a surprisingly endearing romance until its action-thriller obligations steer proceedings back onto a more predictable path." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 57 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
Glenn Kenny of The New York Times gave The Gorge a positive review, saying, "'The Gorge' takes an already implausible premise and then catapults it out of the espionage genre and into science-fiction and horror ... this movie crackles most as a lively pas de deux between Taylor-Joy and Teller, who commendably take their material seriously no matter how seriously ridiculous it gets."
Jack Coyle of the Associated Press gave the film one and a half stars out of four, calling it "preposterous", arguing that the tonal swings between action and romance were not of high quality, with the movie feeling like an "intriguing but empty genre mash-up and streaming-only exercise". Coyle also took issue with the basic structure of the plot, arguing that "If some version of hell was pried open, would we, perhaps, want more than two guards?"