Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller’s new horror The Gorge is a story about the lengths humans will go to when they find the person they love.
So it’s not lost on either actor that the film is hitting Apple TV+ on Valentine’s Day. In fact, both Taylor-Joy and Teller, longtime friends who are acting together for the first time, think it could be the perfect date-night flick.
“I’m going to steal Miles’ line for this. It’s wonderful alternative programming for Valentine’s Day,” Taylor-Joy enthuses in a video call from Los Angeles. “If you feel you’ve watched the same movies over and over again, we invite you to watch The Gorge. There’s something for everybody and I think you will really enjoy it.”
Directed by Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) and written by Zach Dean (The Tomorrow War), The Gorge centres on two highly-skilled assassins named Drasa (Taylor-Joy) and Levi (Teller) who fall for one another when they are tasked with guarding opposite sides of a mysterious gorge that houses an unimaginable evil.
Derrickson says the love story and the fact that he saw something broken in each character is what appealed to him as a filmmaker. “They are both trained assassins who’ve killed many people,” he says. “But we realize early on that they each have a conscience about what they do. They have tried to use their special skill set in a moral way, but there is always a price to pay.”
“It’s a beautiful love story,” Teller emphasizes. “I think you really want these characters to be together and that’s the sign of not only a good film but a sign of the strength of the characters as well. It’s got a bit of everything. I think it’s a perfect Valentine’s Day movie.”
“It’s also visually interesting with a great soundtrack,” Taylor-Joy interjects. “Did we do it?”
After I tell them both that they’ve sealed the deal for me and my Valentine’s plans are now taken care of, the pair break out into a big grin. Mission accomplished.
Three years after he co-starred opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, Teller says the risk that Drasa and Levi take in embarking on a romance while something evil lurks right below them was a challenge he had yet to try in his acting career.
“What I appreciate when I see really great horror films and the performances, is you’re dealing in such heightened states all the time. I’m more into that than the run-of-the-mill, slice-of-life, here’s two characters having coffee,” he says.
In addition to starring in The Queen’s Gambit and last year’s action-packed Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Taylor-Joy has had a lot of experience in the horror genre, having acted in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split and Glass, as well as Robert Eggers’ The Witch and Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho.
But she’s far from being a horror movie buff, so no scares for her on Valentine’s thank you very much.
“I’m not somebody who can really watch horror movies because my imagination is far too active. If I see something onscreen it lives on in my brain forever,” she laughs. “But acting in them is really fun … horror-action is fun. I’m very comfortable in blood and dirt and there’s a plethora of that in this movie, so I felt right at home.”
The Gorge hits Apple TV+ on Feb. 14