You’re an elite Marine Scout Sniper stationed on a remote guard tower, alone, for a year. You don’t know what you’re guarding or where you are. But a thousand yards away, across a mist-filled gorge, is another tower with its own guard, also elite, and strikingly beautiful. It isn’t until you start getting to know her that things go downhill fast.

Apple TV’s The Gorge is the latest genre-defying film from director Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Doctor Strange, The Black Phone), blending elements of sci-fi, horror, and romance.

Miles Teller plays Levi, a former Marine, now contractor, haunted by the terrors of his time in combat. His attempts to silence his nightmares by reading and writing poetry have so far been unsuccessful. Anya Taylor Joy’s Drasa carries the “shame” of a Russian contract killer. Drasa often buries her darkness beneath spontaneity and punk rock, but she can’t extinguish it completely.

Together, Levi and Drasa are tasked with guarding The Gorge, a miles-long wound in the earth, perpetually flooded with mist and shrouded in government secrecy since the end of World War II. Levi represents the Western powers, and Drasa the Eastern powers, in their joint effort to keep “the hollow men,” twisted and malicious nightmare figures, from escaping the confines of the Gorge.

Of course, before long, and against all regulation, Levi and Drasa forge a relationship that eventually blossoms into romance. Levi finds Drasa’s happy spontaneity a bright campfire in the frigid vault of his soul, and Drasa comes to love Levi’s firm, steadying presence. Levi strikes a daring plan to span the gorge.

But on his return journey, his cable breaks, casting him into the Gorge. Drasa parachutes in after him, and the nightmares that await them both below are almost too horrifying for words.

The Gorge has plenty to offer, eschewing genre categories and switching tones halfway through, a refreshing change from most formulaic, throwaway popcorn movies. Top actors further elevate the premise. Teller brings a nuanced and believable performance to his depiction of a troubled but competent veteran, whose homeschool education and traditional upbringing lead him down paths of thought few tough guy action heroes have dared to tread. Taylor Joy likewise brings her usual brilliance to her performance.

Undoubtedly the highlight is the chemistry between Teller and Taylor Joy. We’re treated to a romance between two young talents at the absolute top of their game. The characters also respect each other as professionals, steering clear of the annoying and pervasive battle-of-the-sexes trope. We’re even treated to a couple of male-to-female rescue scenes, anathema in today’s Hollywood.

(Mild spoilers to follow.) Much can be said of the T. S. Eliot references, since the film quotes “The Hollow Men” several times and even names the ghastly creatures of the Gorge after the straw-filled figures of Eliot’s poem. Like the film, “The Hollow Men” is a bleak reflection of a post-war society, its men gutted and hobbled and waiting, it seems, to die. But though “The Hollow Men” ends with one of the most famous lines of 20th century poetry, it’s the prayer, the incomplete, gasping shred of The Lord’s Prayer, reaching out amidst the cold gloom, that stands out:

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men,” 1925

Eliot wrote “The Hollow Men” two years before his conversion to Christianity. In the midst of such depression, frozen by his own inner darkness and the grinding juggernaut of the world’s machinations, he cried out. The film doesn’t go as far as crying out to God for help, but it does call the audience to break out of our tombs, reconnect with people (even people who are supposed to be our enemies), and reject the pulverizing wheels of the world.

On the surface, The Gorge is a fun, action-romance-horror adventure, with a somewhat predictable ending and a slight lack of budget. But beneath this, it carries deeper themes of self-sacrifice and finding hope in human relationships. When governments have wrung you dry and used you up, you might find yourself jumping into what seems like certain death to save the life of your beloved.