Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller in 'The Gorge.' **Courtesy Apple TV+**

“Visually striking and conceptually ambitious,

but fails to fully deliver on its thrilling premise.”

From the moment Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) was announced as the director of The Gorge, expectations were high for a film that would blend high-concept sci-fi with human intimacy. Throw in a pair of charismatic leads—Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy—and a premise built on mystery, forbidden romance, and cosmic horror, and The Gorge should have been an electrifying genre-bender, balancing blockbuster spectacle with deep emotional stakes.

Instead, it lands in the uneasy space between a thoughtful meditation on isolation and a star-crossed love story, too earnest to be truly thrilling and too inert to be an effective action film. Its most compelling ideas—military control, human expendability, the terrifying unknown—are buried beneath a romance that leans heavily on charm but struggles to build genuine depth.

Set in a world where shadowy military organizations are perpetually fighting to contain an unspecified cosmic threat, The Gorge introduces us to Levi (Miles Teller), a former military sniper suffering from the weight of his past. Recruited by an enigmatic agent (Sigourney Weaver) for a classified mission, he is assigned to guard a seemingly empty ravine in the Northern Hemisphere, a site of unknown but catastrophic potential. His only instructions? Keep watch, remain alone, and under no circumstances communicate with the sniper stationed on the other side.

That sniper is Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy), a hardened Lithuanian sharpshooter with a misanthropic streak and an accent that wavers between convincing and aspirational. Where Levi is tormented and brooding, Drasa is icy and detached, and together they make an intriguing pair—at least from a distance.

Much of the first act unfolds through an extended long-distance courtship, with Levi and Drasa communicating via binoculars, handwritten notes, and a playful back-and-forth that grows from curiosity into infatuation. This portion of the film is among its most charming, bolstered by the warm cinematography of Dan Laustsen (The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley), who frames their growing intimacy like a classic Hollywood romance, even as they remain physically apart. But as their relationship moves beyond the gorge, The Gorge itself starts to unravel.

The film’s strongest moments come in its first half, where the deliberate pacing allows space for Levi and Drasa’s personalities to emerge through their wordless interactions. Teller, who has built his career on a mix of intense dramatic performances (Whiplash) and affable leading-man roles (Top Gun: Maverick), leans into a quiet vulnerability here. Taylor-Joy, meanwhile, embraces Drasa’s hardened cynicism, though the script gives her little room to explore beyond her initial standoffishness.

Once the physical separation ends and their relationship shifts from longing to reality, The Gorge struggles to maintain momentum. Their chemistry, once intriguing and filled with tension, becomes oddly stilted, as if the transition from playful yearning to tangible romance was too sudden for the film itself to process. Teller and Taylor-Joy, two actors known for their ability to create complex characters, feel constrained by a script that reduces their dynamic to broad gestures and awkwardly written dialogue.

POPULAR ON THE CINEMA GROUP

Then comes the inevitable descent into the gorge itself—a long-awaited moment that should kick the film into high gear. Instead, the film’s pacing, already languid, stretches even thinner. The horrors lurking below—mutated creatures, toxic gas, and skeletal monstrosities—are visually effective but narratively hollow, deployed more as obstacles than as real threats that deepen the story’s stakes.

Derrickson, no stranger to horror-infused storytelling, creates striking visuals but fails to sustain an atmosphere of dread. For a film built around a central mystery, The Gorge lacks the escalating sense of discovery that should make its final revelations feel earned. When the film eventually uncovers the truth about the snipers’ mission—an elaborate military conspiracy involving human expendability and government overreach—it does so through rushed exposition, making it difficult to feel the weight of the revelation.

The Gorge is a film caught between its own ambitions, attempting to fuse the emotional intensity of a romance with the cerebral tension of a high-stakes thriller. It’s visually compelling, with Laustsen’s cinematography and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ haunting score adding layers of atmosphere, but the narrative fails to fully capitalize on its potential. Teller and Taylor-Joy do their best with the material, but their characters remain frustratingly underdeveloped, preventing their love story from ever feeling as epic as the film wants it to be.

While there are glimpses of the smarter, sharper film The Gorge could have been, it ultimately settles for a well-intentioned but underwhelming blend of sci-fi spectacle and sentimental romance. Not quite thrilling enough to be a great action film and not quite layered enough to be an exceptional drama, The Gorge ends up as a gorgeously shot but emotionally muted experience.