As trailers for massive, romantic Valentine's Day movies go, The Gorge might have one of the more surprising ones that I can remember. That's because, unlike most love stories, it's got a clear action-thriller twist with some wild sci-fi elements.
The Apple TV+ original, which comes out on 14 February 2025, will feature Anya Taylor-Joy opposite Miles Teller, each standing guard for a full calendar year on one side of the titular fissure. They're there to guard the entrance to hell, apparently, which is seemingly a two-person job.
Teller will apparently be representing the American side of the bargain, but Taylor-Joy is breaking out a Russian-sounding accent. She'll initially seem like an enemy, but despite both having orders to ignore each other, the two clearly hit it off via signs and mimes.
It's certainly a unique way of constructing a meet-cute, not least when an eventual kiss is made harder by a few hundred meters of hellspawn-spewing gorge. This isn't a particularly enigmatic trailer, though, and we get to see a clear glimpse of how things will play out, with Teller's character eventually falling into that huge fissure and Taylor-Joy base-jumping in to save him.
Whether you call it sci-fi, fantasy, romance or all of the above, The Gorge most certainly looks unique, and it'll be an interesting test of Taylor-Joy's A-list credentials. Her star turn in the equally far-fetched but even more stylised Furiosa sadly didn't manage to help it make the box office splash it needed, after all.
This is also another example of an interesting approach from Apple TV+ when it comes to full movie releases. After the likes of Wolfs and The Instigators this year, it would seem that it's pressing ahead with taking even huge stars straight to streaming rather than giving them widespread cinema releases. Perhaps The Gorge will get limited screen time in some locations but, for now, we simply know that it'll be on Apple TV+ from 14 February, information that won't exactly push people to buy tickets either way.
Of course, if the best streaming service is the one that gets the biggest movies earliest, then perhaps this will play into Apple's hands in the long run. We'll have to wait and see, and add The Gorge to our watchlist in the meantime.
