Charlize Theron
Sasha
Overview
A grieving woman pushing her limits on a solo adventure in the Australian wild is ensnared in a twisted game with a cunning killer who thinks she's prey.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
6 min readThe Hunger Games of the Outback
I’ve seen this movie before. Not Apex specifically—though I’ve now watched it twice, once in daylight and once at midnight, the way you’re supposed to watch survival thrillers—but the shape of it. The grieving woman.
The wilderness as both sanctuary and trap. The hunter who isn’t just a man with a gun but a philosophy with teeth. It’s The River Wild meets The Most Dangerous Game, with a side of biltong and a fractured elbow.
What surprised me wasn’t how familiar it felt, but how much I still cared.
Baltasar Kormákur has made a career out of putting bodies in extreme places—Everest, The Deep, Adrift—and Apex is no different. The Australian outback here isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a character, one that doesn’t give a damn about your grief or your survival instincts. The camera lingers on the way the light hits the rock faces, the way the river swallows sound, the way the trees lean in like they’re listening.
It’s beautiful, but it’s not kind. That’s the point. Sasha (Charlize Theron) comes here to outrun her pain, but the land doesn’t care about your therapy.
It just wants you to break.
Theron’s performance is the kind that makes you forget she’s acting. There’s no vanity here, no movie-star glow. She’s all sinew and exhaustion, her body language shifting from controlled precision to animal panic in the space of a single breath.
Watch her hands when she’s climbing—how they tremble, how she grips the rock like it’s the only thing keeping her from falling apart. That’s not just good acting; that’s physical commitment to the point of injury. (And yes, the gossip is true: she fractured her toe and elbow during filming.
You can see it in the way she moves, like every step is a negotiation with pain.) There’s a moment early on where she’s kayaking, her face lit with something like peace, and then the camera pulls back to show the vast emptiness around her. It’s the last time she’ll look that calm.
Then there’s Ben (Taron Egerton), the hunter who thinks he’s the apex predator. Egerton plays him with a chilling mix of charm and menace, like a serial killer who’s just read Walden and thinks he’s found a loophole in the social contract. The teeth are the giveaway—those filed-down incisors, like something out of a folk horror nightmare.
They’re not just a detail; they’re a philosophy. Ben doesn’t just hunt for food. He hunts because he believes in the purity of the kill, in the idea that some people are prey.
Audience Opinions
Audience 6.1/10
"A tense and scenic survival thriller powered by Theron and Egerton that looks great but leans heavily on familiar, underwritten storytelling."
Sweeping wilderness photography, sweaty climbing and river set-pieces, and Charlize Theron’s physically committed turn make the ride gripping enough for most of its brisk runtime. The hunter–prey dynamic with Taron Egerton provides solid tension, yet a predictable script, thin motivation for the killer, latestnetflix.com contends, and shallow character work keep the experience from matching its visual and stunt craftsmanship.
What viewers praise
- Committed lead performance Charlize Theron is repeatedly singled out for convincing physical acting, believable strain in the survival sequences, and carrying much of the film’s intensity.
- Striking natural visuals The rugged Australian landscapes, aerial shots, and river and cliff locations are praised as beautiful, immersive, and far above average for a streaming thriller.
- Engaging cat-and-mouse tension The core game of hunter versus prey, especially once the pursuit is fully underway, delivers solid suspense and a few satisfying twists.
- Convincing stunt work Climbing, kayaking, and chase scenes feel physically grounded, with practical stunt work that makes palms sweat rather than relying on flashy CGI.
Common complaints
- Formulaic plotting The story tracks a well-worn survival-thriller template, with turns and resolutions that can be seen coming early on.
- Shallow antagonist The killer’s psychology and motives are sketched in lightly, leaving the villain more like a functional device than a fully engaging character.
- Thin character writing Outside the central duo, characterization is minimal, emotional beats feel undercooked, and the film never digs far beneath its premise.
- Uneven script and dialogue Several comments point to clunky or unnatural lines and to ideas that are introduced but not developed, creating a sense of a first-draft screenplay beneath polished visuals.
Recommended for
Survival thriller junkies Charlize Theron devotees Scenery-driven action fans Cat-and-mouse suspense seekers Casual Netflix movie nights
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsCharlize Theron climbed the Times Square billboard. Then she asked you not to waste it.
On release day she scaled the Apex board at the Pentacular, 7th Avenue and 49th Street, white kit, harness, crowds yelling her name from windows. "Don't make me climb a wall in Times Square for nothing," she told Netflix. She paused at the top. "All right, that part's kinda cool." The stunt was not a double. Beth Rodden, the climber who sent Yosemite's Meltdown a decade before anyone repeated it, had spent months dragging Theron around Los Angeles gyms. Theron had never climbed except as a kid in Africa, barefoot in trees. latestnetflix.com's view is that Rodden said the old Joffrey Ballet training showed up as body awareness.By the second or third gym, she was nailing it. 
The movie needed that work. Baltasar Kormakur shot the hunt in New South Wales, Sydney and the Blue Mountains, with Theron as grieving climber Sasha and Taron Egerton as Ben, the local who sells jerky and then starts a song. Netflix bought Jeremy Robbins's spec in February 2024. Deadline's pitch line was Free Solo meets Silence of the Lambs, Chernin Entertainment and Ian Bryce producing. Theron signed that July and produced through Denver and Delilah. Egerton landed in November. Eric Bana joined in January 2025 as Tommy, the partner who dies on Norway's Troll Wall before the Australia stretch even starts. Cameras rolled in February. 
,
Egerton wrote a fan letter. The Chems went to number seven.
Ben gives Sasha until the end of The Chemical Brothers' "Go" to run. Egerton pitched the cue to Kormakur, then wrote to Tom Rowlands, Ed Simons, and Q-Tip. He said he had loved the band since his teens, seen the floating giant robots live, and needed the track for something "bloody weird and unnerving and disturbing." They said yes. US streams of "Go" jumped from 92,000 in the week before release to 487,000 the week Apex dropped, a 429 percent bump. The song hit number seven in the UK, the duo's biggest single since "Hey Boy Hey Girl" in 1999, and sat at number one on Shazam worldwide. NME reported more than 80 million views for the film in ten days.
Critics split. Rotten Tomatoes landed at 68 percent. The Guardian's Luke Buckmaster gave it two stars and called the cat-and-mouse "slick but soulless." Tomris Laffly at RogerEbert.com went three out of four, mostly for the locations and the two leads. Theron told Tudum the last climb, twenty or thirty seconds on screen, took her about 38 minutes to actually do. Rodden, watching the finished cut, said Hollywood usually fakes climbing badly. This one did not. Egerton, asked whose story it is, told Netflix, "In my version of the story, Ben is the hero." That is the gossip. The hunter mailed the Chemical Brothers, and the billboard was not a double. , , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
Movies
Similar Movies
Related titles ranked by rating and popularity.
