Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton play mortal enemies in Netflix‘s new thriller “Apex,” but off camera, these two couldn’t have more respect for each other.
The film is now streaming, and the stars are opening up about what it really took to bring this one to life.
A Survival Story With Serious Star Power
In “Apex,” Theron plays Sasha, a grieving mountain climber on a solo journey of self-discovery deep in the Australian Outback, who finds herself hunted for sport by Ben, a cunning and deeply unsettling local killer played by Egerton. Crossbows, underwater wrestling, and a relentless chase through treacherous wilderness ensue.
It’s a tense, physical, emotionally raw film directed by Baltasar Kormákur, the filmmaker behind “Beast” and “Adrift,” who has a knack for putting his actors through their paces in the name of authenticity. “When you don’t have obstacles, filmmaking becomes too contrived, too easy, and nothing feels real,” Kormákur told Netflix. “The obstacle is what you’re looking for. The rub between your idea and the obstacle is often where art is created.”
That philosophy is on full display in “Apex,” and Theron and Egerton both felt it.
Two Stars Who Refused to Play It Safe
One of the most remarkable things about “Apex” is how much Theron and Egerton shaped the film before cameras even started rolling. As a producer on the project, Theron was deeply involved in developing the script — and she and Egerton both pushed hard to make sure the film didn’t fall into the usual traps of the genre. “We spent a lot of time trying to kill every single trope surrounding movies like this,” Theron told SlashFilm.
To get there, she brought in a writer she’d worked with on David Fincher’s acclaimed series “Mindhunter” — someone she trusted to help craft the intense two-hander dynamic at the film’s core. “When we had these moments of the two of us, we really wanted a writer to help us figure out how to break tropes,” Theron said.
Egerton threw himself into that process with equal commitment, joining script meetings regularly, sometimes after a 12-hour day of filming. “Lots of movies get made and it’s not always the fact that everyone cares that much,” he told SlashFilm. “And I really thrive in those kind of environments.”
Charlize Theron Discovered a New Passion
For Theron, an Oscar winner and action-movie veteran known for “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Atomic Blonde,” and “The Old Guard,” “Apex” demanded a whole new kind of physical endurance. She trained extensively with accomplished rock climber Beth Rodden to prepare for the role, building up to the barefoot, jeans-clad climbing seen in the film. And when it came time to film those sequences, she didn’t hand it off to a stunt double. “The climbing is all me,” Theron confirmed to SlashFilm. “I did 100 percent of all the climbing and the bouldering in the middle of the film.”
She also made clear just how real the production felt overall. The film only used a stage for three weeks. The rest was shot entirely on location in the gorges of Australia. “Everything about it is real,” Theron told SlashFilm. “When you watch the film, we don’t have face replacement except for a few water shots.”
By the end of the shoot, Theron had developed a genuine love for climbing. “There’s a mental problem-solving component that my OCD brain loves,” she told Netflix, adding that the parallels to acting were striking. “In both climbing and acting, you’re constantly making choices, adjusting, responding to what’s in front of you and what your body is telling you.”
What Critics Are Saying
The film received a warm critical response. Variety called it a return to cheerfully pulpy genre fare, praising its heart-in-mouth action spectacle and calling it a better-made and better-acted adrenaline ride than recent viral hits on the platform. The Roger Ebert site praised the gorgeously shot picture for prioritizing white-knuckle thrills while still managing to avoid being repetitive, with Egerton’s performance and Theron’s composed strength making a worthy pairing.
“Apex” is now streaming on Netflix.
