Staring Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton and Eric Bana

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur

Netflix

Sasha (Charlize Theron) is an adventurer grieving the loss of her partner Tommy (Eric Bana) on the Troll Wall in Norway. Months later, driving through Australia to Wandarra National Park she meets Ben (Taron Egerton), a friendly local jerky salesman. Then she meets him again, in far, far darker circumstances. Hunted by Ben through the forest, Sasha must put her grief to one side to survive the landscape and the man hunting her across it.

Kormákur’s got a roving camera that feels almost Sam Raimi-like in its fondness for motion. There’s a great opening shot on the Troll Wall which makes your head spin and sets the tone neatly. The landscape is always hostile, always an adversary and Sasha is fighting everything, all the time, even before Ben’s true colours reveal themselves.

That motion is matched by Jeremy Robbins’ smartly handled, minimalistic script. That opening tragedy is key to the tone setting once again: Tommy and Sasha do everything right; they just don’t quite do it quickly enough and that constant sense of chasing a break is the driving engine of the whole movie. Sasha makes smart choices, but the common sense she’s learned at huge expense is a hazard as much as a weapon. Ben doesn’t care about anything but the hunt, and that freedom lets him lope across the landscape and constantly outpace her.

The two leads are enormously impressive and more than up for the demands placed on them. Theron, often a controversial figure, leaves everything on screen here with a physicality and commitment that unites this with her best work. The closing fight especially is fantastic, an ugly, untidy battle sold by Egerton’s boyish screaming and the grim determination of Theron setting what may be a freshly broken nose. Crucially, she also leaves every emotion on the surface, meaning the closing scenes ground the horrific elements of the story in the context they need.

Egerton appears to be having the time of his life here. He’s always been fun to watch but with a freshly shaved head, a gym honed physique and boundless confidence he plays Ben as a homicidal Peter Pan. A role like this is incredibly easy to tip over into parody, but Egerton understands that the key to Ben is the quiet moments. When you get the nicely handled, and horrifying, reveal on what his ‘jerky’ is made out of, Egerton lands it because he undersells the line into near non-existence. Again, that closing fight is made by his blood-soaked boyish cries. He’s a child in a man’s body, intensely dangerous because he’s never been taught to be anything else. He’s a monster in the most metaphorical ways and he’ll haunt you the way he does Sasha.

Verdict: Apex is a stripped to the bone piece of action horror made by some great direction, a willingness to be as brutally un-romantic as possible and some great direction. This is the sort of thing Netflix is very good at and I’m delighted to see it do well. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart