Directed by: Baltasar Kormákur
Written by: Jeremy Robbins
Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

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Director Baltasar Kormákur is no stranger to survival cinema. Whether it’s the sub-zero slopes of Everest (2015) or the vast Pacific Ocean in Adrift (2018), he’s clearly drawn to settings and stories that push the human spirit to its limits. Unfortunately for Idris Elba, that meant facing off with an especially large and rather angry lion in Beast (2022). Now, back for another crack of the genre whip, Kormákur’s Apex sees Charlize Theron fighting for her life in the unforgiving Australian outback — but her predator walks on two legs, not four.

Apex opens with a couple, Sasha (Charlize Theron) and Tommy (Eric Bana), scaling the Troll Wall in Norway. As they attempt to reach the summit the weather takes a turn for the worse, and disaster strikes. Five months later, Sasha travels to a national park in Australia for a solo kayaking trip. While picking up supplies at a gas station, she encounters Ben (Taron Egerton), a seemingly friendly local who helps her map out a route. However, his kindness is simply a ploy to lure her into a deadly game that sees him hunt Sasha as his prey, pursuing her through the dense rainforest and its treacherous rapids.

At first, Apex is all too familiar. Opening with its tragic accident to set up Sasha’s character arc is as clichéd as it comes. And while the characters’ cliffside struggle is dramatic, it’s painfully obvious where things are headed, and spoiler alert, it’s not the summit. Jump to the main plot, and its origins are equally unoriginal. As Sasha stops off for supplies she’s subjected to intimidating and unwanted attention from a couple of unsavoury locals, seeing the film indulge in some of the genre’s most overused tropes to create fear and foreboding. Yet, both sequences have enough atmosphere to overcome their more derivative qualities, placing Apex in prime position to really go in for the kill.

And it does just that, seeing predator and prey locked in a thrilling, tense fight to the death. Both Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton are fully committed to the physical demands of their roles and this conviction gives Sasha’s struggle for survival a real primal edge. With desperate chases and frenzied fight sequences to follow, the film’s second act is where it excels — perhaps nowhere more so than in one more subdued scene set at Ben’s riverside camp. It’s here where the pair truly size each other up, the film favouring a more restrained psychological conflict over the physical spectacle to come, but proving just as compelling.

With such a remarkable natural setting — many of the film’s key scenes were shot in Blue Mountains National Park, NSW — Apex should look the part too. And while there are definite glimpses of that native beauty thanks to its welcomed on-location point of view, the combination with Netflix’s more expected green-screen sheen and middling CGI obscures what could have been a truly dynamic picture. Instead, the most striking visual ends up being Egerton’s imposing physique which, combined with his commendable Aussie accent, makes him a formidable and convincing killer, unique to this setting.

Theron is more than a match for him though. She musters all of Sasha’s pain, giving her conflict with Ben the grit needed to make the premise work. Its simple, animalistic nature is the film’s main strength, but Apex fails to fully recognise this, demonstrated by a third act that, just as it should be accelerating towards its climax, instead grinds to a sudden halt. This trade-off from ferocious, fast-paced middle act to more calculated conclusion is an unfortunate misstep. Relying on a tension that never really materialises, Apex loses its grip at the worst possible moment, taking all remaining intrigue along with it.

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Star Rating: ★ ★

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