A secret gorge hides monsters and a romance that defies its own genre
In short: Released in 2025, this genre-bending film follows two elite snipers tasked with guarding a mysterious, cloaked chasm. While they initially believe they are containing monstrous threats, they soon uncover a dark corporate conspiracy. The result is a strange mix of intimate romance and high-stakes action that divided critical opinion.
The narrative centers on Levi, a former Marine, and Drasa, a covert operative, who are stationed at isolated towers on opposite sides of a top-secret gorge. Their mission is to prevent the escape of the Hollow Men, creatures revealed to be soldiers who vanished in the late 1940s. The site is maintained by Darklake, a defense firm seeking to weaponize mutations caused by a leaked bioweapon from an abandoned World War II laboratory. The protagonists eventually discover that the location is rigged with a nuclear fail-safe known as Straydog, designed to sterilize the area if the secret is compromised.
Directed by Scott Derrickson from a screenplay by Zach Dean, the project originated as a spec script that appeared on the 2020 Black List. Production involved international locations, with Norway’s Rauma River providing the exterior backdrop for the gorge. The film is notable for its meta-references; characters bond through chess and drumming, nodding to the lead actors' previous roles in The Queen's Gambit and Whiplash. Despite the actors' initial reservations about these scenes being too on-the-nose, the director insisted they remain in the final cut.
Upon its February 2025 release via Apple TV+, the film achieved the platform's highest-ever viewership for a movie. However, critical reception was polarized. Some reviewers praised the chemistry between Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, noting that the film shines as a character-driven romance. Others criticized the tonal shift from a quiet, suspenseful study of isolation to a generic action-thriller. While some found the premise preposterous, others appreciated the confidence of the staging and the atmospheric score composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The Gorge (film)
- Also: Wikidata — The Gorge · CC0
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