Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton flex their muscles in Baltasar Kormákur’s unrelenting, no-holds-barred survival thriller.

by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Apex doesn’t mess around. From its succinct (and clever) title to its trim running time, it is a helluva efficient machine. The dictionary definition for apex is “the highest point or summit.” The title also brings to mind an apex predator, both meanings proving relevant to this stomach-flipping ‘survival thriller.’ Charlize Theron is Sasha, a thrill seeker of the extreme variety who never feels more alive than when scaling inaccessible peaks in far-flung corners of the world alongside her life partner, Tommy (Eric Bana). The film opens on the face of Norway’s Troll Wall and it’s one of the most startling opening scenes in recent cinema history. Acrophobes beware. Then, after the title, the film flips to Australia, a terrain no less forbidding in its natural savagery.

Sasha, played by the 5’10” Theron, is a woman who looks like she can handle herself. But when she checks into a Wandarra National Park gas station, she is warned to go carefully as there have been a number of disappearances in recent years. The Outback is not a playground for the faint-hearted, but Sasha has lost none of her craving for extreme adventure and can handle the local white rapids like a native. Nature she can deal with, in all its many guises, be it mountainous, aquatic or zoological. But there’s an unexpected menace in Wandarra National Park, Nature’s most dangerous animal: the Australian male.

Here, the Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur is in his element, having previously brought us such survival thrillers as The Deep (2012), Everest (2015), Adrift (2018) and Beast (2022). His objective is not to allow the viewer time to reach for their popcorn. As one scene hurtles into the next, we can barely take in the breathtaking scenery of Norway’s massif Trolltindene or Australia’s Blue Mountains. But, this being Netflix, you can reach for your pause button and soak in the primal beauty of these outlying locations. Indeed, the mastery of the drone camera has taken cinema into a whole new arena.

As usual, Charlize Theron defies Nature herself, playing an athlete who really, really doesn’t look fifty-years-old. And then there’s a shaven-headed Taron Egerton as we’ve never seen him before, tapping into a hitherto-seen malevolence, deploying otherworldly animal calls as he plays sadistic mind games with his prey. Incidentally, the casting of the Melbourne-born Eric Bana was a smart move, too. The actor’s current series on Netflix, Untamed, set in Yosemite National Park, is a perfect segue into the vertiginous terrain of Norway’s Romsdalen valley. But then everything about Apex is pretty smart. It’s a thriller that knows how to thrill, even when its genre drifts into something entirely more horrible. There is more than a whiff of John Boorman’s 1972 classic Deliverance here. To quote Taron Egerton: “extreme pain is a part of growing up, Sasha.”

Cast: Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, Eric Bana, Matt Whelan, Rob Carlton, Aaron Pedersen.

Dir Baltasar Kormákur, Pro Ian Bryce, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, David Ready, Charlize Theron, Beth Kono, A.J. Dix, Baltasar Kormákur and Will McCance, Screenplay Jeremy Robbins, Ph Lawrence Sher, Pro Des Jean-Vincent Puzos, Ed Sigurdur Eythorsson, Music Högni Egilsson, Costumes Margot Wilson, Sound Glenn Freemantle, Dialect coach Felicity Jurd.

Chernin Entertainment/Ian Bryce Productions/Denver and Delilah Productions/RVK Studios-Netflix.
95 mins. USA/UK/Iceland/Australia. 2026. UK and US Rel: 24 April 2026. Cert. 15.

Apex

Michael