Apex Movie Review

Apex (2026)

Watch Apex on Netflix
Written by: Jeremy Robbins
Directed by: Baltasar Kormákur
Starring: Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, Eric Bana
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
A grieving woman seeks solace in the wilderness only to become ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a serial killer.

Verdict
It's a neat idea, full of potential, that ends up being generic. I wondered if this was just a perverted hunting expedition, but the movie keeps wanting to make it weird and some kind of a game. That seems more like padding for the run time than plot development. In the last third I was hoping for some kind of genre shift, something to enliven the movie. That doesn't happen, and by that point this has played all of it's cards. We just have to wait out the clock.
Skip it.

Review
The introductory scene features Sasha (Charlize Theron) and Tommy (Eric Bana) scaling Troll Wall. She's stubborn and undeterred despite trouble summiting. Tommy convinces her to camp and summit tomorrow. I've never seen a tent attached to the side of a mountain. It's a portaledge so they can rest for the night and continue the journey the next day. The situation soon becomes intense as any issues on a cliff ultimately mean tumbling to your death.

Charlize Theron utilizing a portaledge

Later Sasha is in Australia heading to a national park. She's harassed in a quick-mart. There she meets Ben (Taron Egerton) who steps in to diffuse the situation with her stating she doesn't need the help. He does offer her direction to the park.. Sasha faces more harassment as she camps for the night. In both cases, the groups of men claim they're trying to be nice. We know that's not true.

Sasha kayaks down a river all day, and the next day she somehow runs into Ben and his camp. It seems staged. Why would he be there? She's also lost several items from her camp. Immediately we're suspicious of Ben. Why wouldn't he have told her at the quick-mart he's also headed to the park? Ben soon reveals he's been following her, and that he's the one that took her equipment. What's the game? Ben is going to hunt her. Initially I thought this might be a riff on the short story The Most Dangerous Game (1924).

Charlize Theron plays Sasha

I though the title might be a reference to the apex of a mountain, but it seems it might be apex like a predator.

Ben's not just hunting her. It's some kind of a game for him. He takes a break from hunting Sasha to play loud music and swing into the river on a rope naked. This is clearly padding. Sasha hopes to steal his boat, but it's trap and she becomes ensnared. She hits him with pepper spray, though I don't think he's recover so quickly. From there he takes her to some cave, his evil lair.

Ben is bonkers. We're never quite sure of the underlying reasons. He reveals his teeth are all pointed. He mentioned earlier some tribes file down their teeth. It's likely he did that, rather than his teeth grew that way. There's a lot of plot contrivance to the movie. Instead of trying to incapacitate Ben, Sasha worries about the wire binding them together and hits it with a rock. Everyone but her realizes that won't work, and that gives Ben a chance to recover. As he's on the brink of killing her he stops for no other reason than to give her an opening. I wish this was more relentless. We get these twists that don't amount to much. I really hoped in Ben's cave we'd get a genre shift. The movie needed something.

Taron Egerton plays Ben

Sasha is put in a position where she has to save Ben to save herself. It was easy to see she was going to resort to some kind of subterfuge to escape. Ben was mildly aware, but he didn't have much choice. I wish this had genre shifted; some kind of ancient cult sacrifice or even a shift like The Descent (2005).

The characters make too many mistakes for this too feel completely believable. Without some kind of big shift or twist, this isn't much more than a by the numbers thriller. The shock is that Ben hunts people. Everything past that feels like some degree of filler.