LOVE ON THE EDGE

THE "DOOR TO HELL" IS THE UNLIKELY SETTING FOR ROMANCE IN THE GORGE. DIRECTOR SCOTT DERRICKSON EXPLAINS HOW HE MASHED MULTIPLE GENRES TOGETHER FOR HIS VALENTINE'S DAY ACTION-HORROR

- RICHARD EDWARDS

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A SPOT of romance this Valentine's Day, how's this for an unconventional meet cute? In new Apple TV+ movie The Gorge, a pair of elite snipers (played by Top Gun: Maverick's Miles Teller and Furiosa's Anya Taylor-Joy) are given year-long assignments at some unknown canyon in the middle of nowhere.

While their respective observation posts are situated a mere 600 metres apart, the spooky, mist-filled gorge of the film's title lies between them. Their respective paymasters have also forbidden them from talking to each other, as they carry out their lonely mission to prevent the highly classified - not to mention extremely unpleasantcontents of said valley from getting out.

Let's face it, even the vast distances and/or computer screens writer/director Nora Ephron put between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in hit '90s romances Sleepless In Seattle and You've Got Mail feel inconsequential next to obstacles like those.

"The only other reason they would ever have for coming in contact would be if one was hired to take out the other," The Gorge director Scott Derrickson tells SFX. "All the romantic movies that I really love, right up to my latest favourite, Palm Springs, have got a very unique situation for the characters to fall in love in a really unpredictable and abnormal way. I think that's at the heart of the whole film.

"That era of Nora Ephron at her peak in You've Got Mail and Sleepless In Seattle, and other romantic movies of that period were really wonderful and everybody was seeing those pictures.