Apex

Apex 2026 Netflix review

AT A GLANCE

Apex 2026 review: Baltasar Kormákur’s Netflix survival thriller has two excellent performances, a stunning Australian setting, and a film that genuinely cannot decide whether it wants to be a survival action movie or a psychological horror. The cast deserved a sharper script.

Apex 2026 Review: A Film That Wastes Its Own Best Assets

Apex 2026 Netflix review verdict: a frustrating watch. The talent is there. The setting is there. Two actors at the top of their game are there. What is missing is a film that knows what it wants to be and commits to it. Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton are both excellent in Apex, which makes it all the more aggravating that Baltasar Kormákur’s Netflix thriller tries to blend survival action with psychological horror in ways that never fully connect. The result is a movie that delivers impressive moments without ever delivering a coherent experience.

What Is Apex?

Charlize Theron plays Sasha, a rock climber and widow of Tommy, who sets out alone into the Australian wilderness in the aftermath of her husband’s death. Taron Egerton plays Ben, a cannibal practitioner who hunts Sasha through the backcountry of New South Wales. The cat-and-mouse framework is simple and proven. A dangerous predator, a skilled survivor, a vast wilderness between them. It works on paper. Baltasar Kormákur’s short, taut, spectacularly shot thriller may be premiering on Netflix, but its soul lies in the multiplex. The bones of a genuinely great survival thriller are visible throughout. The execution around them is what fails.

Kormákur is masterly in utilizing his locations, seamlessly marrying every turn, cave, rapid, and waterfall with the narrative, realizing their full potential. The Blue Mountains of New South Wales are a genuine character in the film, and the cinematography consistently makes the most of the landscape. If Apex had matched that visual ambition with a more focused script, it would be a very different film.

The Experience

The film’s identity problem is its most damaging flaw, and it surfaces early. Apex spends a large portion of its first act building Sasha’s grief, her relationship with risk, and the psychological reasons she is still an adrenaline junkie months after losing her husband. This is material that could anchor a compelling character study. The trouble is that none of it pays off in the second half when the survival thriller mechanics take over. The backstory feels like it belongs to a different, more patient film. It takes a whopping 40 minutes of runtime to get to what one assumes is the film’s actual reason for existing: a tense cat-and-mouse thriller between an insane serial killer and the intended victim whose survival skills are sharper than anticipated. Goodreads

The second major problem is Taron Egerton’s character arc. Ben is introduced with genuine menace and Egerton commits to the role with everything he has. Egerton is one of the many inherently charismatic stars who could be described as a character actor in a leading man’s body, and he is by far the most interesting thing in Apex. Ben is a character who is clearly psychopathic from the moment he is introduced. The tragedy is that after all the buildup, his arc resolves far too quickly. The time the film spends on Sasha’s past would have been better spent on Ben. The villain is the most compelling figure in the movie and the script barely gives him room to breathe.

What Works

Egerton’s performance is the reason to watch. He is insane and brutal, and Egerton shows off his character’s craziness in spectacular fashion. This is a role that required a complete transformation from his previous work and he delivers it without hesitation, making Ben the kind of villain who is frightening precisely because he feels thought-through and purposeful rather than cartoonishly evil. Medium

Theron is equally committed. She brings genuine emotion to the role and authentically releases the weight of her character’s past when it is time. Theron’s action work in Mad Max is still her pinnacle, but she is more than game here. When the film lets her physicality drive the scene rather than cutting around it, the result is exactly what this kind of survival thriller should feel like. Medium

She does not play Sasha as a dull superwoman. Her redoubtable fighting spirit still permits human wear, tear, and palpable exhaustion. When she is getting tossed against rocks or battered by wild currents, we feel the cost to her body. That physical authenticity grounds the film during its best sequences. Notes by Thalia

What Doesn’t

The identity problem runs through the entire film. Is this a survival action movie? A horror film? A character study about grief and risk addiction? Kormákur attempts all three and fully achieves none. The movie’s adherence to formula is embarrassingly obvious at times, its themes simplistic, and its characters two-dimensional at best.

The direction undercuts the performances in the action sequences. Apex undermines Theron and her dedication to doing her own stunt work at every turn, cutting too frenetically and relying on too many close-ups. The viewer cannot get a full sense of the geography of the space nor how difficult the physical feats must have been.

And then there is Taron’s death. It happens far too fast. For a character built up as the film’s most compelling threat, the resolution of his arc is rushed in a way that feels like a different edit of the film was planned and abandoned. The story invests heavily in establishing Ben and then does not give that investment its due return.

Verdict

Apex is a film that settles for being watchable when it had everything it needed to be genuinely great. Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton are both doing excellent work inside a script that does not fully deserve them. The Australian setting is spectacular. The individual sequences have real impact. And yet the whole is less than the sum of its parts, because Baltasar Kormákur never resolved the identity question at the film’s center.

You will not remember it long after the credits roll. But it is a happy throwback to a time when more junk-food cinema got to look and sound and feel this good. Stream it for Egerton and Theron. Manage your expectations for everything around them. There is a better version of this film that exists somewhere in the edit room, and it is a shame that version is not the one that made it to Netflix.