Who are the Hollow Men in The Gorge movie? Explained

The Gorge, starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor Joy, premiered on Apple TV+ on February 14, 2025. But unlike most Valentine's Day movies, the film mixes tales of romance and emotional connection with a high-action plot, mystery, and horror. Set in a mysterious, desolate wilderness, Levi (Teller) and Drasa (Taylor-Joy) are contracted killers sent on a classified mission.

Their job is simple, which is to protect a mysterious gorge from unknown evils—the Hollow Men. The Hollow Men are horrifying creatures who have been attacking the gorge. While Levi and Drasa are initially prohibited from interacting with one another, they form a bond from opposite sides of the mysterious gorge and are later forced to work together to protect themselves and the rest of humanity from the monsters.

Joining Teller and Taylor-Joy in The Gorge cast are Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu, and James Marlowe, whose character became one of the Hollow Men.

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Who is The Gorge's Hollow Men? Their origin explained

Above the mysterious gorge in the movie, the story revolves around Levi and Drasa, who are highly trained elite operatives contracted to keep whatever's in the pit from going outside. However, there's a catch—they are not allowed to interact with each other, although they broke that rule with some clever note exchanges and soon forged a bond.

Another catch in the story is what lies below each of their towers—the beasts known as the Hollow Men. Levi falling into the misty gorge and Drasa jumping after him start their discovery of the Hollow Men, whom they have to fight against to return to their towers.

While in the pit, they also discover what appears to be an abandoned community and a lab. A scene from a 1940s film reel in The Gorge reveals the origin of the horrors and monsters that are now living in it. It turns out that at the end of World War II, the Allied Forces of the US, England, and the Soviet Union were experimenting with advanced chemical weapons. However, an earthquake damages the property and halts their project.

The earthquake also caused the gases and chemicals in the lab to mix with human DNA, creating mutant creatures. The Hollow Men are one of those. They were once a battalion of soldiers stationed to protect the project, which is evident in the soldier uniforms worn by the Hollow Men whom Levi and Drasa kill in the movie. While they still have the same human bodies they once had, the toxin deformed their physical appearance and turned them into zombie-like monsters.

Anyone who enters the misty gorge will get infected, the same thing that happened to Bradford Shaw (James Marlowe). He was the first sentry in the West Tower, and in a quest to destroy the horrors living in there, he led a cavalry into the pit, but they never came back. Instead, they became a part of the horror-filled gorge as monster humanoids.

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The Hollow Men are named after a 1925 poem by T.S. Eliot

Besides being a trained killer, Miles Teller's character in the film, Levi, is also fond of poetry. He had taken poetry classes before and was able to identify the term "Hollow Men" from the title of a 1925 poem by T.S. Eliot. Levi explains the idea of Hollow Men based on the poem, saying that they are people "stuck between life and death."

Besides the name, the poem also ties perfectly with the soldiers who became the Hollow Men as the poem was inspired by the dismal conditions following the First World War.

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Watch The Gorge, which is now streaming on Apple TV+.