Apex, the latest Netflix Movie Product™ that society will collectively forget about in three weeks, is perhaps more interesting for its misnomer title than it is for its substance; though the film, narratively, explores what it wants to be interpreted as the ‘apex’ of human emotion—the adrenaline-producing rush of survival, the ‘thrill of the chase,’ so on and so forth—Apex, holistically, isn’t the peak of anything. Though perhaps a bit hyperbolic, Apex is closer to the nadir of the film industry than it is to the… apex, the embodiment of what’s so frustrating about the contemporary state of filmmaking, art consumption, and the broader role streamers have played within those arenas. There was a time when movies like Apex—those with engaging enough premises and A-list performers (in this case, Charlize Theron)—were released into theaters, given some genuine marketing, and left to market to decide their fate; they’re now dumped onto streaming services to little interest or fanfare with only cursory advertising, these platforms believing that being featured on their frontpage is all the marketing these projects need. Is the latter fate all that worse than the former? That’s debatable, but it’s certainly more cynical.
It’s perhaps unfair to hold Apex as a symbol of modern industry frustrations and trends, as it’s merely the product of a misanthropic, potentially unstable system rather than its root cause. It’s also not terrible; directed by survival thriller veteran Baltasar Kormákur and written by Jeremy Robbins (in their feature debut), Apex‘s poster may as well appear when you search the word “adequate” in the dictionary. Fronted by two more than capable performers in Theron and Taron Egerton, Apex features some engaging and genuinely well-realized moments throughout; it’s broadly, however, less than the sum of its parts, yet another innocuous but unmemorable Netflix release that comes off more as content than it does a deliberate artistic statement.
Apex opens with Sasha (Theron) and her husband, Tommy (Eric Bana), traversing the peaks of Norway as they scale the Troll Wall, also known as the Twitter block button. As one may expect from a film that doesn’t feature Eric Bana’s name on the posters, something promptly happens to Tommy, leading a grieving and regretful Sasha to her husband’s home country of Australia. It’s at an Australian gas station that Sasha meets beef jerky purveyor Ben (Egerton), a comparatively normal and well-adjusted man in what is otherwise a sea of comically strange and abrasive individuals. As one may, again, expect from a movie of the genre, Ben isn’t the relatively normal man Sasha initially perceived him to be, ultimately commencing a tense game of cat-and-mouse in which this unhinged jerky-maker tracks our protagonist through (the fictional) Wandarra National Park.
The film is at its strongest when it allows us to bask in the abject derangement and absurdity of Ben, as he’s, on paper, the type of character any actor would love to sink their teeth into. A ritualistic serial killer who values the reverence of the hunt but must, at times, masquerade as a normal human being, it’s a multi-faceted role that theoretically allows a performer to flex their dramatic muscles while also having some fun in the film’s more deliberately absurd and unsettling moments; Egerton, in his second Netflix feature after Carry-On (2024), holds up his end of the bargain, seeming affable enough before steadily peeling back layers to showcase a deeply distrubed, thoroughly unsettling monster who likes to dance to songs by The Chemical Brothers. There’s obvious influence from other iconic cinematic antagonists, but Ben’s characterization—and Egerton’s performance—elevate the character from a derivative obstacle to an engaging miscreant who steals nearly every scene he’s in.
And while Ben blossoms through the derivation, the same can’t be said for the rest of the movie, as it’s broadly insipid, unoriginal, and milquetoast. There’s nothing abhorrent or inherently offensive—it’s generally a competently made film—but it’s just rather bland; the chase sequences are tense enough, dynamic between Sasha and Ben engaging enough, and auxiliary lore interesting enough to keep one occupied throughout the 95-minute runtime, but it’s all just so unremarkable. There’s no single sequence that sticks out as dynamic or exceptional in any meaningful way, making the entire experience not unenjoyable, but rather a relative waste of time. Sasha, as a protagonist, is a bit underdeveloped and one-note, not given much characterization aside from ‘grieving’ and ‘good in survival situations.’ Her lack of substance would’ve perhaps been a bit more noticeable had it not been for Charlize Theron being Charlie Theron, but the Academy Award winner elevates the character to be just as adequate, if not uninteresting, as the rest of the film.
Apex also has the issue of prioritizing its less interesting elements: it’s your conventional, run-of-the-mill survival thriller with horror undertones, but it’s far more engaging when its horror ambitions are at the forefront. Sequences in which Ben chases Sasha, in which our protagonist—and, by proxy, the viewer—can’t see her pursuer but can feel his presence, have an almost slasher flavor to them, and the scene in which we fully learn of Ben’s intentions and motivations feels ripped straight from a genuine horror movie. These components are far too often relegated to the background, with the film instead prioritizing the inherent tension and anxiety produced from activities like rock climbing and kayaking over the fear elicited from a psychopathic cave-dweller. This isn’t unexpected from what is foremost a survival thriller, but it’s frustrating to see the bones of a more interesting and engaging movie within what is a generally banal final product.
This issue is perhaps most conspicuous within the third act, which, while narratively and thematically logical, just feels underwhelming. Though ushered in by what is the movie’s most deliberately horror-rooted sequence, the film makes the ill-advised decision to strip Ben of much of what makes him intimidating, again putting the emotional crux of the climax on environmental tension as opposed to that derived from its antagonist. It’s not an illogical sequence considering the genre and Kormákur’s past films, just misconceived, lackluster, and a bit anticlimactic given the film’s strengths to that point. Apex, while generally fine in terms of direction, pacing, and tone, attempts to break no molds nor tries to be singular in any real way; it’s not a traditionally bad movie, but it’s just generally uninspired and creatively bland, leaving it feeling like empty calories as opposed to a satiable meal.
And this, unfortunately, is a sentiment true of many Netflix—and, more broadly, direct-to-streaming—projects; content is king, its success measured not by its substance, but by the number of subscribers it drives. Netflix and its competitors, sure, find the occasional breakout hit or film that genuinely has some artistic merit, but the bulk of their projects are easily consumable fodder that viewers forget about within a couple of hours. Apex is just another cog on this proverbial wheel that’s going to keep on spinning, its most offensive element perhaps being its inoffensiveness. It’s an adequate thriller with solid enough performances, some engaging components, and some well-crafted tension, but there’s nothing about it from a technical, narrative, or thematic perspective that makes it unique or distinct; in other words, it’s your standard Netflix film.
