The Gorge, on Apple TV+

It is the grimmest hardship duty station in world, even worse than Guantanamo or Siberia. Fortunately, only one single soldier gets stationed there during the year-long rotation, but obviously that “volunteer” must be carefully selected. The special recruit must stand guard against the monsters inhabiting a large chasm in Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge, which premieres tomorrow on Apple TV+.

A bad psych eval forced former Marine sniper Levi Kane to step back from special operator assignments, but the shadowy Bartholomew approaches him for an outside the box gig. Drugged unconscious on the flight over, Kane has no idea where his outpost is located. It is just him relieving the apparently British sounding J.D. in the brutalist concrete post-war fortification, unless you count Drasa, the sentry stationed across from him on the eastern side of the gorge.

Technically, they are not supposed to have contact, but they inevitably work together when the monstrous mutant hordes come streaming out of the gorge. Soon, they start communicating and even flirting via sketchpad and wipe boards. Even if they were not the only man and woman for miles around, they would probably still be interested in each other, so Kane sets about surmounting the insurmountable gulf between them. Then, the monsters attack.

Basically, the so-called “Hollow Men” creatures look a lot like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, but some of the special ones have Xenomorph-like attributes. They are super-bad news, but Kane and Drasa soon suspect they did not simply spring out of the ground. Frankly, the deep state conspiracy elements really do not make much sense. Of course, it is even more far-fetched to think the Russian government would dispatch Drasa to eliminate a war-profiteering oligarch who manufactures landmines, as screenwriter Zach Dean ludicrously suggests early in the film. Such a death-merchant would be part of Putin’s bedrock support system in real life.

Nevertheless, the young-snipers-in-love chemistry between co-leads Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller is surprisingly—maybe even shockingly—appealing. There are real sparks and also plenty of tracer bullets. At its best, the vibe of The Gorge is reminiscent of the original Predator and Cameron’s Aliens, with a neo-Cold War romance mixed in. It doesn’t hurt to have Sigourney Weaver chewing the scenery and emulating every dodgy company exec she faced in the Alien franchise, as Bartholomew.

Some of the political trappings are not particularly well thought-out, but Dean deserves credit for all the T.S. Eliot references, starting with the Hollow Men themselves. The horror elements are not as scary as Derrickson’s The Black Phone, but the genre action delivers a lot of tension and thrills.

The hulking concrete outposts also serve as highly atmospheric and evocative settings. This is a bad place, haunted by bad things, but viewers will root for Drasa and Kane to survive. Weirdly, it is not at all a terrible choice for Valentine’s viewing either. Enthusiastically recommended for fans of military-themed monster movies, The Gorge starts streaming tomorrow (2/14) on Apple TV+.