Apex Review: Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton Need to Climb Out of This Movie

There is a line in cheesy action movies between good and bad. Sometimes, the actors can sell the ridiculous feats on sheer charisma. For Apex, you would think the presence of Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron and Golden Globe-winner Taron Egerton would do the trick. While they add some levity and fun to Apex, this movie stumbles with comically bad CGI that wears on the audience scene after scene.

What is Apex about?

After a climb goes bad, Sasha (Charlize Theron) tries to find new ways to push her survivalist mentality. To escape the tragedy, she goes to Australia on a solo canoeing trip to the bush. However, on her way into the wilderness, she meets the young, charismatic Ben (Taron Egerton). Despite Sasha’s best efforts, she eventually sits down with him for a short meal.

However, by the end of their talk, Ben reveals his true intentions. He does not hunt game, but instead kills wandering tourists. With his new prey in sight, he is determined to kill Sasha. Over the next forty-eight hours, Sasha will fight off the man in pursuit and face her own mental blocks in the process.

Apex is as generic as it gets, which is shocking considering the two leads.

Whenever your movie features Theron or Egerton, you’ve recruited a multi-talented actor who can play any tone for your movie to work. Getting both should be like hitting the lottery. For stretches, Apex survives on the chemistry and talent of its stars. While Theron takes on a generic action heroine role, Egerton steps out on a limb as a weird, funny, and shockingly malicious monster. The two complement each other, with Egerton getting the far showier role of the pair.

However, the tropes start working their way into Apex early. In the first ten minutes, you’re introduced to the definition of a red-shirt/doomed character. By the time we land in Australia, Theron starts noticing missing posters while being verbally harassed by other men. However, it is no surprise that the movie-star-looking guy in the gas station is clearly up to no good himself. His mere appearance makes it hard to buy the other guys as dangerous, in part because the camera keeps drifting to him and placing him at the center of the frame. By the time he “turns,” there is nothing about Egerton that is surprising.

Apex also has a big star problem in the first act. Eric Bana is too famous not get billing on the poster. This signals his fate before he’s even woken up in the first scene. His dialogue is derivative in every scene. He talks about needing to stop climbing and how this life is not interesting to him anymore. There’s probably an alternate cut where Eric Bana has “Live Forever” tattooed on his face. While Bana is fun to see on screen, nothing he does is even remotely challenging, and there’s no tension to what is about to happen.

While a two-hander would be a fun way to approach versions of Apex, there are too many obvious allusions made to The Most Dangerous Game, The River Wild, and other action thrillers. Director Baltasar Kormákur has become a low-key vulgar auteur, with movies like Adrift and Beast finding success in genres that have seemingly disappeared. Yet here, his camera feels anonymous.

A big part of the issue is the CGI. The sludgy look does not come solely from the brown water from the river. There are embarrassing renderings where we watch CGI ragdolls fall off fake mountains, dip underwater, and still come out looking rubbery. The characters look so fake, it’s impossible to feel any tension or even empathy for the figures we see plummeting toward mortal danger.

To make matters worse, we know there are scenes that were shot with practical effects. The gap between the two is so vast that it is easy to tell the difference in lighting and visually tactile scenes. The river rafting sequences are genuinely very fun to experience, and the mountains toward the end of Apex are genuinely scary to imagine climbing. That said, the movie has been interrupted by so many difficult-to-watch scenes that it feels disposable.

Is Apex worth watching?

Sadly, Apex is something of a dud. Some will get a sliver of pleasure watching Egerton dance along to The Chemical Brothers or see Charlize struggle to free solo a cliff face. Yet despite Egerton having a genuine ball with the strange character he’s crafted, there’s not much else going for Kormákur.

Hopefully, Theron and Egerton can escape their place in streaming purgatory and find their way back to the big screen. Egerton hasn’t been in a non-voice acting major theatrical release since 2019. It’s been just as long for Theron apart from a pair of Fast and Furious roles, both of which feature the same problems as Apex. These actors are too talented to get left in movies that cannot utilize their star personas. Apex is a dud in that regard and leaves us wanting a lot more.

Watch Apex on Netflix starting April 24, 2026.

Apex Review: Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton Need to Climb Out of This Movie