Apex is now streaming on Netflix. The survival thriller directed by Baltasar Kormákur, the Icelandic filmmaker behind Everest and Adrift, stars Charlize Theron as a grieving rock climber who travels to the remote Australian wilderness to find peace after a tragedy.
The audience instead finds Taron Egerton trying to hunt her for sport.
It runs 95 minutes, is rated R, and is available worldwide today, April 24, 2026. Here is everything you need to know about it before you decide whether to watch.
What Is Apex?
The film opens in Norway. Sasha, Theron, and her Australian boyfriend Tommy, played by Eric Bana, are scaling the Troll Wall, one of the most dangerous vertical rock faces on earth.
A storm is closing in. Sasha, characteristically, wants to keep climbing. She has bandaged, bleeding fingers and she wants to keep going.
Tommy convinces her to stop and they set up a portaledge tent, one of those terrifying hanging structures suspended on the cliff face like a fragile paper lantern.
Something goes wrong in the night. Tommy falls. Sasha barely survives.
Before we even get to know much about Tommy, he’s out of the movie, slipping to an awful death and leaving Sasha holding on alone.
Five months later, Sasha is driving down a remote dirt road in Australia. She is there to push herself through another extreme adventure, solo, in the wilderness, attempting to navigate a wild river through the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.
Grief and adrenaline have always been the same thing for her. She is not there to heal so much as to find out whether she still can.
Then Taron Egerton’s Ben appears. He is a local hunter. He spots Sasha in the wilderness and makes a decision. She is his next prey.
He gives her a head start, the sporting gesture of a man who considers himself the apex predator in any environment, and the hunt begins.
Theron described the film to Netflix:
“It’s about a woman who finds herself in the woods with a serial killer, and she has to win. This is an action-adventure, psychological thriller. It’s really a story about survival, not just physically but emotionally, and about finding out what you’re made of.”
The film is a pure two-hander from that point forward. The hunter-hunted dynamic becomes more psychological and complicated as it develops, Sasha has climbing skills, survival training, and a stubbornness bred from years of pushing her body through extreme conditions.
Ben has local knowledge, weapons, and a psychotic commitment to finishing what he started.
The Australian wilderness functions as a third character, beautiful and completely indifferent to whether either of them lives.
What Critics Are Saying
The reception has been broadly positive with a consistent set of caveats.
The Hollywood Reporter called it “bracingly nasty” and praised Theron as “the premier female action star working in movies,” saying her physicality “is the equal of any male co-star.”
The review praised director of photography Lawrence Sher’s vertiginous drone work, particularly in the Norwegian opening, and described the survival sequences as genuinely nerve-rattling.
Deadline called it “predictable but pretty” and said it is “yet another perfect showcase for Theron’s exceptional physical talents.” The review praised the 95-minute pace, “never letting up for one of them,” and said Egerton “shows he can play psychos with the best of ’em and delivers a real sicko here.”
The criticism landed on the script, with Deadline arguing Kormákur is “too talented a director to waste his time on a script that just dials up the clichés of this stalking subgenre.”
Heaven of Horror was more enthusiastic, calling it “an absolute treat” and saying the film “managed to avoid some of the tropes and stereotypes that many survival thrillers suffer from.”
That review specifically praised the stunt work as “a downright breathtaking experience” and singled out Egerton’s villain turn as the film’s standout.
Rotten Tomatoes audience reactions have been warm: one reviewer called it “a survival thriller that starts solidly enough before gleefully careening off a cliff thanks in no small part to an absolutely wackadoo performance from Taron Egerton.”
Multiple others noted the film’s pace, “fast tempo, doesn’t allow you to feel bored or take your eyes from the screen.”
The general consensus lines up somewhere between Deadline and Heaven of Horror: the script is familiar, the execution is confident, the two leads are excellent, and the location photography is worth watching on a large screen even if you have seen this kind of story before.
Why Taron Egerton Is The One To Watch
Egerton is known primarily for playing likable leads, Eggsy in the Kingsman franchise, Elton John in Rocketman, the earnest hero of Netflix’s 2024 hit Carry-On.
Apex is his first significant villain role, and by all accounts he commits to it completely.
One reviewer put it plainly:
“I love seeing Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton face off. There is banter throughout the movie, and sure one of them is a psychotic killer, and the other a grieving person trying to survive, but both are clearly used to struggles. In fact, I’m not at all certain that Apex would have worked nearly as well with other actors in these roles.”
The dynamic works because both characters are credible in their respective modes. Theron has built a twenty-year body of work as a physical action performer, she insists on doing her own stunts whenever possible, and that commitment is visible in everything from the climbing sequences to the hand-to-hand confrontations.
Egerton brings a different kind of menace, theatrical and unsettling, the kind of villain who enjoys the game more than the outcome. Together they carry a film that would not survive a weaker pairing.
Kormákur described filming with his cast:
“Working in the rugged, beautiful terrains of Australia with three of the world’s most talented, dedicated actors in Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, and Eric Bana is such a joy, even as I put them through the ringer in this unique survivor story.”
Baltasar Kormákur And His Directing
Baltasar Kormákur is one of the more reliable names in the survival genre. His 2015 film Everest dramatized the 1996 disaster on the world’s highest mountain with a level of physical authenticity that few films in the genre have matched.
Adrift, his 2018 film, covered the true story of a woman surviving 41 days at sea after a hurricane. Both share a DNA with Apex, a single protagonist, an extreme natural environment, and a story built around the limits of human endurance.
The previous film before Apex was Touch, released in 2024, a more elegant, decades-spanning drama of lost love that represented a deliberate departure from his survival work. Apex is a return to form in the most literal sense.
Kormákur on choosing Australia as the setting:
“For a film like Apex, where the elements and the terrain are characters that loom just as large as the movie stars battling in it, no other country in the world could have taken the place of Australia as our primary location.”
Principal photography began in February 2025 in Sydney and around New South Wales, with the Blue Mountains providing the primary terrain for the chase sequences.
The film’s visual effects, supervised by Enrik Pavdeja, involved contributions from Framestore, ILM, Rising Sun Pictures, Union VFX and Host VFX.
The screenplay is by Jeremy Robbins, in his feature film debut. The script has drawn the most criticism from reviewers, though the consensus is that Kormákur and his two leads elevate the material significantly above what it might have been with a less committed team behind the camera.
The Full Cast And Production
Alongside Theron, Egerton and Bana, Apex features Aaron Pedersen, Caitlin Stasey, Matt Whelan, Rob Carlton, Bessie Holland and Zac Garred in supporting roles.
Several Australian reviewers noted the pleasure of spotting familiar local faces, Pedersen in particular, known for Killing Ground, and Stasey, known for Smile and All Cheerleaders Die, in smaller but well-deployed roles.
Theron co-produced the film through her company Secret Menu alongside Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, David Ready, Ian Bryce and Kormákur himself.
Netflix secured the rights to the film in February 2024, making it a Netflix Original available exclusively on the platform worldwide. There was no theatrical release.
Theron on what drew her to the project:
“When I read the script, I couldn’t put it down and it stayed with me. It felt very pure but with great impact. This movie really fired up my brain.”
If you enjoyed Carry-On, Egerton’s 2024 Netflix hit that became one of the platform’s most-watched films, Apex is a natural follow-up, though considerably more violent and considerably more bleak in its opening act.
If you have seen Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road, Atomic Blonde or The Old Guard and want more of what makes her exceptional as an action performer, this delivers.
If you enjoy survival thrillers and have 95 minutes on a Friday night, it does not waste a single one of them.
The script is not going to surprise you. The structure is familiar. But Apex knows exactly what it is and executes it with two committed performances, a genuinely spectacular location, and a villain turn from Taron Egerton that justifies the watch on its own.
Apex is on Netflix now.
