Official Trailer
Rating: 6.6/10 | Genre: Action, Thriller | Runtime: 96 min
Starring: Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, Eric Bana, Caitlin Stasey, Bessie Holland
Apex is the kind of thriller that had me checking my watch halfway through. Not because I was bored exactly, but because I could feel the movie running out of steam even though there was still a good chunk of runtime left.
Charlize Theron plays a woman dealing with some serious grief who decides to go solo hiking in the Australian outback. Smart move, right? Well, things go sideways when she crosses paths with a killer who’s out there hunting. The premise is solid. You’ve got isolation, a capable lead, and someone dangerous hunting her down. On paper, this should work.
What Actually Works
Theron is doing her thing here. She’s always believable in these action-heavy roles, and she brings some real weight to the emotional stuff too. Her character isn’t just running around screaming. She’s actually trying to survive, improvising, using her head. That matters.
The Australian setting is genuinely used well in the first half. The landscape feels threatening. You can believe how isolated and trapped she is out there. There’s a scene early on where she’s dealing with some wildlife that made me actually tense.
Taron Egerton as the killer has moments where he’s unsettling, but I’ll get to the problems with his character in a second.
Where It Falls Apart
The biggest issue is that this movie can’t figure out what it wants to be. Is it a survival thriller about a woman against nature? Is it a cat-and-mouse game with a psychopath? Is it a psychological game? It tries to do all three and ends up doing none of them particularly well.
The killer’s motivation is basically that he thinks she’s prey. That’s it. There’s no real depth there. Egerton tries to make something out of it, and he’s not bad, but the script doesn’t give him anything to work with. By the midway point, scenes between them start feeling repetitive.
The pacing drags hard in the second half. Things that should feel urgent just kind of happen. Tension builds and then gets deflated because the plot needs to move somewhere, not because anything organic is happening. I found myself not really caring what happened next, which is pretty much the death knell for a thriller.
There are also some logic problems that bothered me. Not deal-breakers, but the kind of stuff that pulls you out of the moment. Why does she make certain choices? Why doesn’t he just do the obvious thing? These questions kept popping up.
The Small Stuff
Eric Bana’s barely in this, which seems like a waste. The soundtrack is forgettable. At 96 minutes, you’d think the pacing would be tighter, but it somehow feels longer than that.
Caitlin Stasey and Bessie Holland are fine in their roles, but they don’t get much to do.
Final Verdict
Apex isn’t terrible. It’s a middle-of-the-road thriller that has the ingredients for something better but doesn’t quite pull it together. Theron keeps it watchable, and there are some decent moments, but it’s the kind of movie you’ll probably forget about by next week.
If you’re looking for a solid thriller with a capable female lead, there are better options out there. If you’ve got nothing else to watch on a lazy Saturday afternoon, sure, give it a shot. Just don’t expect anything that’s going to stick with you.
What did you think if you’ve seen it? Did the premise work better for you, or did you hit that same wall around the midpoint?
Where to Watch
Stream on: Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads