Apex<\/em> has been described as a \u201csurvival action thriller\u201d \u2014 which is not untrue. It certainly comes from a man whose name has become synonymous with this very specific subgenre. Icelandic director Baltasar Korm\u00e1kur has a habit of telling stories about people in extreme environments \u2014 whether on the slopes of the Himalayas (2015\u2019s Everest<\/em>), on the run from a man-killing lion (2022\u2019s Beast<\/em>), in frozen waters for six hours (2012\u2019s The Deep<\/em>), or being forced to hang out with Mark Wahlberg (2013\u2019s 2 Guns<\/em>).<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n But Apex<\/em> is something else, too. It is a horror film, a Most Dangerous Game chase across land and river and forest and cliff: the point in the Venn diagram where extreme sports meet extreme terror. It\u2019s a very effective genre exercise, slick, to the point and methodically gripping, while, at just a touch over 90 minutes, never outstaying its welcome.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n After following the rarely observed Mission: Impossible 2<\/em> rules \u2014 always front-load your film with a vertigo-inducing pre-titles cliff climb \u2014 it begins proper in the manner of a not-from-round-here psychological thriller, an Eden Lake<\/em>, a Straw Dogs<\/em>, or \u2014 more specifically, given the setting \u2014 a Wolf Creek<\/em>. Sasha (Charlize Theron) is still raw from a recent tragedy, and heads to the Australian Outback for a personal pilgrimage of healing. She\u2019s immediately made to feel uncomfortable by the local game hunters, and Korm\u00e1kur nicely summons the sense of unease and dread you can feel as an outsider in a provincial town, all sweaty and unsettling.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n A really handsomely made bit of schlock.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s during one of these unnerving encounters that Sasha first meets Ben (Taron Egerton), who \u2014 as they so often do \u2014 initially seems like one of the good guys. He defends her honour and offers helpful directions. But it soon becomes clear that Ben is very much not one of the good guys. He spends a little bit too much time out in the woods, flashes the occasional creepy smile and appears to love his mum in all the wrong ways, Norman Bates-style.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Egerton is a canny bit of casting in a rare villain role, the Welsh actor morphing his natural charisma and sinewy frame \u2014 so winning in the likes of Kingsman<\/em> or Rocketman<\/em> \u2014 into something sinister and terrifying. Ben\u2019s boyish, impish delight at hunting down his prey with a crossbow would almost be oddly charming, if he didn\u2019t also share Hannibal Lecter\u2019s predilection for human liver.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Theron, meanwhile, is completely commanding as Sasha, in a performance physically and emotionally on a par with her unforgettable turn in Mad Max: Fury Road<\/em>. Far from a naive waif, Sasha is satisfyingly \u00fcber-capable in the wild, largely avoiding the terrible decision-making that frequently plagues these kinds of films. Theron makes for a convincing outdoorswoman: she abseils, she cave-dives, she kayaks, she free-solos up rock faces and camps under the stars \u2014 all, seemingly, for real.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Think of Apex<\/em>, then, as the effective Point Break<\/em> of horror films. It is a really handsomely made bit of schlock, B-movie stuff on an A-movie budget. Perhaps we\u2019ve been disappointed too many times by the excessive green-screen of recent streaming slop, but this is a film which really benefits from its epic cinematography, seemingly infinite landscapes seen from drones, almost all shot on location in New South Wales. (Shame, then, that it\u2019s bypassing the big screen and going straight to Netflix.) It feels more grounded, relatively speaking, than Korm\u00e1kur\u2019s last disaster flick Beast<\/em>, which necessitated a lot of computer-generated lions for Idris Elba to punch in the face. There is obviously CGI here, including a hugely impressive tracking shot all the way off a cliff \u2014 but it feels far more seamless and well-integrated than what we\u2019ve become used to.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Where it is not always seamless is in how elegantly it threads its themes together. This is hardly a film that is especially profound, as meditative on the subject of grief as a film with the line, \u201cIt\u2019s a drastic bummer!\u201d can possibly be. It\u2019s about as shallow as its canyons are deep, and gets a little bit silly towards its grisly finale \u2014 you will be reminded of Gollum during the film\u2019s most eye-rolling moment. But on the whole, it makes the most of its ruthlessly efficient genre template. The final boss Sasha must overcome is not Ben, but her own personal demons \u2014 free-solo climbing as exposure therapy. It might not be the kind of psychiatry recommended on the NHS, but as a viewing experience, this is one worth hooking your belay onto.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n Just a solidly made cat-and-mouse thriller, with muscularly committed performances from its two leads. It\u2019ll make you want to explore the Great Outdoors and simultaneously never leave your house again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While camping in the Australian Outback, Sasha (Charlize Theron) finds herself being hunted by weird loner Ben (Taron Egerton). Apex has been described as a \u201csurvival action thriller\u201d \u2014 which is not untrue. It certainly comes from a man whose name has become synonymous with this very specific subgenre. Icelandic director Baltasar Korm\u00e1kur has a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Apex\"](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/apex.jpg\")
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