The year may not be over yet, but Apple TV+ already has its eyes turned toward the future. The streaming platform has unveiled today the first trailer for one of its biggest 2025 titles, The Gorge. The new film is director Scott Derrickson’s highly anticipated follow-up to his 2022 hit horror movie The Black Phone, and it’s shaping up to be yet another intriguing genre effort from the filmmaker.
The Gorge stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller as a pair of elite, highly trained snipers from different countries who are assigned positions in two guard towers that stand on opposite sides of a secret, shadowy gorge containing unknown horrors. When Teller’s Levi asks whether his job is to “keep people from going in the gorge,” he’s told, “No, you need to stop what’s in the gorge from coming out.” In case that wasn’t ominous enough, Levi’s military contact, JD (Sope Dirisu), further informs him, “The gorge is the door to Hell, and we’re standing guard at the gate.”
Whether or not we’re meant to take JD literally is unclear, but The Gorge‘s trailer does suggest that there really are hellish monsters and unseen powers lurking within its central chasm’s misty depths.
In addition to Taylor-Joy, Teller, and Dirisu, The Gorge also stars William Houston and Sigourney Weaver. It’s based on a screenplay by The Tomorrow War screenwriter Zach Dean. While there are clear elements of action and supernatural horror in The Gorge, too, the film looks like it’ll give Derrickson the chance to dip his toes into a genre he’s rarely explored before: romance.
Communication between their opposing guard towers may be forbidden, but The Gorge nonetheless follows Taylor-Joy and Teller’s elite operatives as they bond and grow closer from a distance. Their relationship looks like it will, in turn, not only be what forces them to face the horrors of their surroundings head-on but also may be why they ultimately have even a small chance at stopping the dangers of the gorge from climbing into the outside world.
Derrickson, who is best known outside of The Black Phone for directing The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister, and 2016’s Doctor Strange, has experience dealing with demonic dangers and world-ending stakes onscreen. He’s never before attempted to combine as many genres in one film as in The Gorge, though. Viewers will get to see how well he’s pulled that trick off when The Gorge premieres on February 14 on Apple TV+.
