“Apex” Could Be Wilder
On Friday, Netflix released Apex, its newest survival thriller directed by Baltasar Kormákur and penned by Jeremy Robbins. When hobbyist climbing couple Sasha (Charlize Theron) and Tommy (Eric Bana) get caught in a storm atop a wall in Norway, the latter loses his life while Sasha survives. Months later, she travels alone to Wandarra National Park in Australia—the late Tommy’s homeland—meeting a peculiar figure named Ben (Taron Egerton) along the way. Soon on the run from Ben, Sasha faces both her past and present threatened by the predatory presence lurking in Wandarra’s woods.
The concepts presented in this film aren’t nearly as primitive to me as they might’ve been about a year ago. Not the grieving parts, but climbing. Bouldering is great fun, and I can definitely see the foundation of why someone would seek a thrill from a more treacherous climb with much looser (or nonexistent) guardrails. Maybe, in Sasha’s case, the adrenaline of the climb itself would even overpower any in-the-moment grief and memories that may come to mind. Unfortunately, I found the climbing not to matter very much at all in the long run in this movie. There are exactly two climbing scenes in Apex, one at the beginning and one at the film’s climax. In fairness, it’s not the longest film, but with how core the hobby seemed to her and Tommy’s life (as well as the film’s title), I did expect it to focus more on that.
Though, you know well by this point Apex does not refer to a peak but the predatory Ben, a cannibalistic Australian who joins an unwilling Sasha on her trek through the wilderness. I didn’t quite find the two to have the rapport that would’ve made the movie work for me more, but their dynamic was inoffensive overall—just a bit lacking in depth between the apex (pun intended) of the movie’s thrills.
Apex is now available to stream on Netflix. If you want more thrilling wilderness chase movies like this, check out White Raven on our parent site, Galxy!