APEX is a solid made-for-Netflix picture – nice looking, to-the-point, occasionally surprising, and a good showcase for its star, who happens to be one of my favorites. When I revisited ÆON FLUX recently I mentioned how ever since that movie I’ve thought of Charlize Theron as one of those rare actors who’s exactly as serious about the physical performance as the emotional, and excels at both. So, you know, she wins an Oscar for throwing herself into MONSTER and then when she does ATOMIC BLONDE she goes just as hard at fight training and stunt work as she did at portraying the inner life of a serial killer. Here she says you know what? I’m gonna learn how to climb rocks. I’m gonna climb so many rocks in this movie.

Not that that’s the entire topic. Her character Sasha enjoys extreme sports. In the opening she and her husband Tommy (the motherfuckin HULK Eric Bana!) are tandem climbing the Troll Wall in Norway. You know, climbing until they get tired, hanging a tent from the side at night, it’s fucking terrifying, who does that? Sasha and Tommy, that’s who. Though Tommy is getting wary that maybe he’s past his prime.

Okay, I gotta give you a pre-credits spoiler. I was so happy to see Eric Bana in a movie again – I’ve been a fan since CHOPPER, but I don’t see him in enough movies these days. Then I thought oh, wait a minute. Is he gonna die though? In fact is he gonna die in this scene? Yes and yes. A gender-swapped fridging. The real movie picks up five months later with Sasha on a solo camping excursion to Wandarra National Park in Australia. I like that she doesn’t directly say that she’s here because it’s where her dead husband was from. Carrying his compass is enough. Later there’s a part where she hangs her backpack on a tree and the next morning it’s gone. She says, “What?,” puts her hand where the bag was, says “What the fuck?,” and that was enough but when she followed it with a “Where’s my bag?” I thought “Netflix, you sonofabitches! You don’t trust me to be actually watching and following what’s going on?” But mostly this one’s not like that. Mostly they trust me.

In the opening I thought it might be only about climbing so I wondered if it was, like, getting stuck on a mountain, or more of a CLIFFHANGER situation with bad guys. In this part I was wondering is it a 127 HOURS or a THE RIVER WILD? But then there are some classic horror tropes coming in. Greasy locals at a gas station try to intimidate her, nicer locals try to warn her not to go out there alone. “People get lost in those woods.” “People usually do it in pairs.” But her pair is no more. That’s the issue.

I think it’s fair to say there’s an element of WOLF CREEK and WAKE IN FRIGHT and THE ROYAL HOTEL (and THE SURFER? I haven’t seen that one yet) to it, this depiction of macho Australian rednecks menacing outsiders, pretending to be friendly but they know they’re being threatening but they pretend to be shocked that you’re threatened. (There really is alot of Australian cinema warning us to stay away, isn’t there?)

These fuckin guys are terrible, they have names like Diesel and Ripper, and when Sasha has found a beautiful paradise of a camping spot they manage to show up, block her in and skin a bunch of kangaroos right there. So she spends the night locked in her van clutching a can of pepper spray. Not a good camping trip so far.

Back at the gas station there was a guy named Ben who stood up for her, and then gave her directions. And he was played by Taron Egerton (ROBIN HOOD) so I knew it could go one of two ways. Either he’s a nice guy who’s gonna be headed the same way and team up with her, or he’s a psycho. The second seemed more likely, and yep, that’s what this is. A cat and mouse game, Elton John vs. Furiosa in the Australian wilderness. He’s even up front about it being a game. He gives her some supplies and a headstart timed to a Chemical Brothers song. That thing where a psycho does something kinda funny to torture you because you’re certainly not gonna find it funny in these circumstances.

This is the work of Baltasar Kormákur, that Icelandic director who did 101 REYKJAVIK and later came to Hollywood for CONTRABAND and 2 GUNS. But he’s done THE DEEP, EVEREST, ADRIFT, and BEAST, so he really seems to specialize in these dangerous nature movies. This is shot on location in the lush part of the country, not the outback we usually see in movies, and I liked how sometimes it would look beautiful even in a scary scene. (D.P. Lawrence Sher is the guy who did JOKER and THE BRIDE!). He chases her through woods and chasms, down cliffs, into a river (that was hard enough to handle earlier when she was not being chased and had a kayak). They rappel into a cave. He’s got a crossbow and bear traps. He drags her behind a boat. There’s some fighting while chained together like she watched Max have to do in FURY ROAD. It’s an ordeal, but she’s Charlize. She’s gonna win.

I’m sure some purists will be taken out by the more noticably visual-effects-based showstoppers like the brutal slide down a cliff and fall into the rapids. A few parts stand out because the rest of the movie has the illusion of being old school and organic. But I just think of these sorts of things as the modern equivalent of a composite shot in a DIE HARD sequel, and they’re still clearly rigged up doing stunts even if it’s greenscreened and stitched together. The second unit director/supervising stunt coordinator is Greg Rementer, same guy who did NORMAL, NOBODY and BULLET TRAIN. Stunt coordinator Philip Partridge was a performer in FURY ROAD, so maybe he’d met Theron before. In this one she runs and fights like a capable athletic civilian, not like an Imperator, but she’s always interesting to watch.

I was glad the action was more varied than just climbing, but those scenes are incredibly tense, whether she’s being chased or not. We can see that Theron is really climbing something, and Kormákur really communicates how fucking terrifying it must be to be that high up just hanging from rock by your tired, damaged hands.

This started as a spec script by Jeremy Robbins, a writer and story editor for the The Purge tv show. It was on the 2021 Black List. When Deadline announced its sale they described it as “FREE SOLO meets SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.” In some ways it seems formulaic, but I have to admit it didn’t hit everything I expected (no reveal that he put a tracker in her backpack, no twist where the hunters she was afraid of end up helping her), and it impressed me by taking a couple surprising turns. There’s a point where Ben becomes extra weird, elevating a performance that’s pretty fun but maybe a little subdued than I wanted, or think Egerton is capable of. I wouldn’t put it on the cover of Fangoria, but it becomes possible to call it a horror movie.

I especially knew it had me when I realized what the final act would be. It’s a pleasingly deranged idea that I didn’t see coming, yet it ties perfectly into the beginning. And it has nice little touches like SPOILER showing Ben’s death in such graphic detail that you’re pretty god damn sure he’s not gonna get back up like Michael Myers, so when she’s back in civilization and we’re still kinda expecting that it really communicates how she must feel.

One little bit I wondered about is Ben telling her he’s from Britain. I suspect Egerton or someone else felt his Australian accent wasn’t good enough and wanted to explain it. I didn’t notice anything wrong with it myself.

I always joke about the streaming movies that might as well be a tree falling in the woods. Nobody knows it’s there to click on, so does it exist? So I gotta give credit to Netflix for having Theron climb a rock wall under an APEX billboard in Times Square last week. That must’ve been amazing to witness. I also saw this thing on Instagram a while ago where she climbs under a chair. Hard to explain. But it let me know how serious she was about the climbing. And I remembered to watch it. (I keep forgetting to watch the sequel to THE OLD GUARD.)

As far as your English-language-made-for-Netflix rankings this is not at all in the EXTRACTION or (David Fincher’s) THE KILLER range, but around as good as WAR MACHINE or THE RIP, arguably a little better because it doesn’t glorify any cops or soldiers or anything. I don’t think it’s one for the ages, but it’s worth your 95 minutes if you’re particularly fond of either nature-based thrillers or Charlize Theron vehicles.