It’s appropriate that folks are being invited into “The Gorge” on Valentine’s Day

The production by Skydance Media — debuting Feb. 14 on Apple TV+ — is, on its surface, a slice of science fiction-based action. At its emotional core, however, it’s a romance between two similarly lost and decidedly deadly souls.

And the flick works best as a love story thanks largely to its co-stars, the always-compelling Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Menu,” “Emma”) and the increasingly dependable Miles Teller (“The Offer,” “Whiplash”), who also serves as co-executive producer on the project. Their chemistry — developed over the first half or so of the longer-than-it-needs-to-be affair — makes it easier to fight through its borderline-sappy dialogue and warmed-over action-heavy middle to reach its reasonably satisfying if highly predictable conclusion.

On the plus side, “The Gorge” — directed by Scott Derrickson (“Sinister,” “Doctor Strange”) and penned by Zach Dean (“The Tomorrow War,” “Deadfall”) — does manage to build the mystery as to the nature of its all-important titular valley.

When Teller’s Levi is recruited by a powerful shadow figure, Bartholomew (a sparsely used Sigourney Weaver), to guard the western edge of the gorge for a coalition of Western nations, we learn not many know about the geographical feature and what may lie within it due to extensive efforts to keep it a secret. And she isn’t exactly generous with the details. What’s important is that Levi, a highly skilled sniper and former Marine with no personal attachments, is willing to take on this crucial mission requiring him to work alone in and around a heavily armed watch tower for a year.

Before meeting him, we are introduced to the woman who will become his counterpart on the eastern edge of the gorge, working on behalf of a group of Eastern countries. A Russian operative, Taylor-Joy’s Drasa is, like Levi, highly adept at snuffing out a life from a great distance. She snuffs out one in the film’s opening moments.

The years of killing have taken a psychological toll on both. Drasa saves the shells from her kill shots and gives these embodiments of her “shame” to her father, who’s no stranger to this world. Meanwhile, Levi is so haunted by dreams that wake him in the middle of the night that he’ll drive to the beach to write therapeutic poems by moonlight.

Their shared destination is so secretive that the leaders of the allied nations aren’t even told about it.

Sedated for much of the flight to its region, Levi is told by a woman in the plane she is not authorized to reveal their location before he parachutes out of the aircraft. Even J.D. (Sope Dirisu), the man Levi is relieving, who warmly welcomes him on the ground, doesn’t know where he has spent the last year of his life.

J.D. tells Levi he should think of himself as a “highly skilled maintenance man,” one responsible for ensuring the system of defenses is working properly and replenishing ammunition from the armory, which will have anything else he may need.

“I need to keep people from going in the gorge?” he asks.

“No,” J.D. says. “You need to stop what’s in the gorge from coming out.”

Once into his duties, Levi, quite understandably, takes an interest in the lovely Drasa from afar, and she in him. Each is forbidden contact, but, on her birthday, she breaks the rules and writes him a message in print large enough to be read using his long-range viewing equipment. They quickly are engaged in a far-apart flirtation that entails, among other things, a game of chess — almost surely a nod to Taylor-Joy’s starring role in the 2020 Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit.”

On what for her is a particularly painful Valentine’s Day, she writes she wishes he were there with her on the eastern side. He immediately sets about making that happen and zip-lines over to her for what proves to be a satisfying dinner date in her tower, complete with dancing to, appropriately, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Spitting off the Edge of the World.”

The good times are short-lived, as the premise all but demands the two find themselves in the gorge and forced to fend off various supernatural creatures trying to kill and/or eat them. With apologies to giant spiders and the like, the biggest threats to their ongoing existences are human-like creatures named after the T.S. Eliot poem “The Hollow Men,” to whom they’d been introduced earlier in the movie while defending their sides and helping each other send these things back to this figurative hell.

Against the backdrop of a blend of practical and digitally rendered environments, the action largely is of the run-of-the-mill variety — with the possible exception of their rather thrilling attempted escape deep into the proceedings.

It helps that, along the way, Levi and Drasa discover clues that help them piece together how the gorge came to exist and why it is being hidden instead of destroyed.

Is all of that interesting? Eh, vaguely.

As with the aforementioned Dean-scripted “The Tomorrow War,” which debuted on Amazon’s Prime Video platform in 2021, “The Gorge” is a serving of sci-fi-based action that, despite some star power, feels too small for the big screen but pretty large at home.

And like “The Tomorrow War,” “The Gorge” boasts a decent premise but one that could have used some fine-tuning. (Only one person guarding each side of this incredibly important area and being forbidden contact with the other while having the means to do just that? Feels more than a little contrived.)

Nonetheless, you could do worse than making a trip into “The Gorge” part of a Valentine’s night in, but know that, as with many a relationship, that of Levi and Drasa has its less-than-inspiring moments.

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‘THE GORGE’

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, brief strong language, some suggestive material and thematic elements)

Running time: 2:07

How to watch: On Apple TV+ Feb. 14

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