Apex
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Writer: Jeremy Robbins
Cast: Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, Eric Bana, Matt Whelan
Seen on: 1.8.2026

Plot:
Sasha (Charlize Theron) is a mountain climber, an adventurer, always looking for the next thrill. But after a fatal decision, she mostly wants solitude and hopes to find it in the Australian wilderness on a rafting trip. But the locals are somewhat hostile, and trying to escape the boisterous hunters that crowd her planned campsite, Sasha escapes to what she was promised by another local, Ben (Taron Egerton) to be a well-kept secret campsite. Once she is there, she realizes, though, that Ben has other plans than for her to have her trip in peace.

Apex is a very decent thriller, well-paced and well-acted. It never quite reaches the heights of its opening scene again and its plot development is a little stale, but it is fun.

I came to this movie mostly thanks to the memefication of Egerton’s scream and The Chemical Brother’s Go. And rarely have I seen a short clip that is such a fair representation of a film as a whole: Taron Egerton gleefully plays a monster, Charlize Theron shows us why she is an action star and it is all set at a punishing pace.

Still, the best part of the film, to me, was its beginning, the prologue, if you will, where Sasha and her partner (Eric Bana) climb a mountain. It was an effective way to capture the sheer horror of rock climbing (I am a flatlander through and through, being Austrian notwithstanding), while also a wonderful character study.

Later in the film, the character part in particular takes a backseat in favor of action, and while the action was pretty good, it needed a little more emotional weight, I thought – and you get that through more character work. Especially since Ben isn’t so much a person, as a bundle of tropes that is held together by Egerton’s talent. A little more creativity as to what is his motivation, or generally what he is up to, would have been nice in any case.

Overall, it is one of those films that has become increasingly rare: a medium one, not a great blockbuster, but also not a small indie production. A well-known cast, but not like millions and millions of dollars in special effects. And it was probably wasted as a directly-to-streaming release – this would have been more fun in the cinema, even if it was fun enough at home.

Summarizing: extremely watchable.