It’s been a long time since Charlize Theron won her Oscar, for her role in 2003’s Monster. Since then her career has been on the insipid side, choosing roles in action films such as playing Cipher in the Fast and Furious franchise, Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, and two The Old Guard films.

She continues that adrenaline-fuelled theme playing a woman with a head for heights.

After a tragedy climbing mountains in Norway, American Sasha (Theron) looks for a less physical adventure down under, looking to explore the forest outback of Australia.

She arrives with a kayak, looking to explore the rivers solo, whilst getting a thrill navigating the rapids.

The locals aren’t exactly friendly, but one guy Ben (Taron Egerton), recommends her a less tourist-y spot to start her adventure.

When she gets there, it is remote, which she would usually enjoy, if it wasn’t for the fact that she soon finds herself the prey of a very determined hunter, who very much has her in his crossbow’s sights.

This is the fourth film Theron has made for Netflix, and it does feel it’s simply going through the motions.

It’s essentially a run of the mill cat and mouse tale, with a crazed cat and a dexterous mouse.

Although Baltasar Kormákur’s last film was 2024’s bittersweet romance Touch, the Icelandic director has made more action-oriented films such as Everest and survival action horror Beast. The problem is, this is a hybrid of both those genres, and it simply doesn’t work.

Both elements are roughly welded together, making for a truly hackneyed plot. Perhaps if they decided to run with just the one, the film would have been more palatable, but the end result is embarrassingly poor.

Certainly Theron’s character has an athleticism to her, and having her hanging of various cliff edges is impressive, but her Sasha is two dimensional.

Egerton embraces both the Australian accent and playing a rare evil character with aplomb, but his Ben is decidedly generic, with the usual mother issues.

Despite the many action sequences, Apex is a tedious effort, with a somewhat ironic title, because it’s about as far away from the top of anything as you can possibly get.