For the latest Netflix premiere to grace our screens, we find ourselves thrust into the Australian outback for a survival thriller that amasses a veritable mountain of influences to climb. Yep, once again it’s time to wade through yet another nail gnawer that sees a woman traumatised by the death of a loved one try to find some sort of inner peace while grappling both with nature and a crazed psychopath while seeking adrenaline in the most inhospitable terrain imaginable.
If we were going purely by synopsis alone, Baltasar Kormákur’s Apex immediately finds itself on the back foot as it sounds suspiciously similar to a host of other movies; yet all involved are obvioisly counting on the pairing of Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton to mine something fresh under the watchful eye of the director of Everest. But even if Furiosa vs Elton John delivers, can it stop a movie succumbing to the dozens and dozens of movies that have all told virtually the same story – after all, actors as diverse as Meryl Streep and Burt Reynolds have all had similar fights for survival at some point in their careers…
In what has become the required trauma for this sort of film, we find husband and wife team Sasha and Tommy flirting with disaster more than each other when their tandem climb to scale the Troll Wall in Norway goes incredibly South in a hurry. While Tommy repeatedly suggests that a frustrated Sasha holds off on reaching the summit after experiencing some difficulty, a fast moving storm gives her a lifetime of guilt and regret after she’s required to make a cruel sacrifice.
Five months later and we find Sasha still chasing that thrill, only for different reasons. As she drives to Wandarra National Park in Australia, she seems to be looking for something beyond just adrenaline after the death of Tommy, we’re just not sure if it’s punishment or absolution. Still, after the typical types of run-ins people seem to have with Aussies in movies like these (cops warning of dissappearances; lecherous, creepy-ass hunters), Sasha soon gets directions from a friendly local Ben, who offers her the options of an easy or hard route. Longing for a challenge, Sasha chooses hard, and soon is whizzing through the rapids of Blackwater Bay in her kayak, looking for that specific, elusive thrill.
However, it turns out that Sasha has found herself in a classic, be careful what you wish for scenario, when it turns out that Ben has not only been stalking her, but has chosen her to be his latest bit of sport as he’s prone to selecting victims to hunt throughout the wilderness of the outback. Finding that her survival holiday has now turned into an actually battle of survival, Sasha must match wits and skills with a deranged predator who sees killing her as some sort of vital ritual to fulfill. But as the hunt takes its toll on both participants, Sasha needs to gain that killer instinct if she’s ever going to make it back to civilisation.
So, I suppose the first order of business is to sort through the jumble of other movies that Apex strongly resembles, as it often seems that Netflix routinely just rips-off movies it can get the rights to stream. Which movie it’s actually shooting for might be up for some bit of debate, as so much of Kormákur’s bone-lean thriller seems derived from other, more famous sources to the point where you suspect that its been made solely for people who’ve never seen a survival thriller in their life. You want to go the Australian serial killer route first? Well, we don’t have to go far to count up the similarities between this and Greg McLean’s savage Wolf Creek as John Jarratt’ affable monster has a lot in common with Egerton’s cheerful looney and you could also draw plenty of parallels between Ben and Jai Courtney’s antipodean maniac, not to mention the actor sharing the buzz cut, muscles and dancing habits of James McAvoy from Split.
From here, the name dropping of familiar films start falling like rain. The whole basic plot could be derived from anything from Deliverance, to The River Wild, to even the third act of Predator – and even the opening trauma (which sees a cameoing Eric Bana do a surprising amount of work for such a short time on film) could have been plucked out of any number of movies that took influence from the first scene of Cliffhanger. Yep, whichever way you look at it, on paper Apex stand out from the crowd as much as a Clone Trooper and it does seem rather indicative of the streaming era that virtually no attempt at originality has been made from Netflix’s end.
However, you don’t get names like Theron and Egerton signing on to stuff like this if the filmmakers don’t have some sort of trick up their sleeves and thankfully, in an era of greenscreens and face replacements, we get a taught thriller that sees its two leads go hell-for-leather trying to out do each other when it comes to the physicality. Also, when you’ve directed a film about climbing Everest and and had Idris Elba punch a lion (not in the same film, regrettably), you learn a few things how important realism is in movies like this, so Kormákur ensures that a lot of the crap the actors absorb on-film ends up being dome for real.
It’s here that Apex finally manages to find a firm foothold and digs in. Theron may not be working her way through pages of dialogue for a lot of it, but it’s supremely gratifying that the former Furiosa can still tough it out with the best of them. Whether kyacking at break-neck speed or hurling herself off the nearest precipice with Tom Cruise levels of dedication, what her role lacks in depth, she makes up for it in indomitable spirit. Similarly, Egerton finds enough macabre quirks in Ben to make him stand out in the most creepy of ways – especially when you find out what hid prized beef jerky is actually made from, or how he’s tricked out his dental work after being inspired by various tribes. Simply put, Theron is gutsy enough, Egerton is crazed enough and Kormákur puts them through enough realiatic shit to carry the film cleanly through the fact that it’s basically a composite of at least two dozen other movies. And just when you think that the story has run out of way to have the minimalist cast butt heads, the script flips the plot by having them have to try and work together to survive their predicament. While this twist is left to play out a little bit too close to the end to really take advantage of it, it’s good that a film about trying to survive in the wild knows the importance of a shifting landscape.
Even though the dedication of Theron to put herself in the most exhausting of circumstances saves the day, there’s no escaping that Apex could have rustled up a few more original ideas before setting out on its grand – and frequently nasty – adventure. Yet it’s amazing how watching two ridiculously fit actors beat the shit out of each other in the middle of nowhere can put that all at the back of your mind for most of its brief running time. Apex may not be peak excitement, but it proves to be a little bit more than just Wolf Creek with a gym membership.
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