As much as fans think streaming services and tentpole movie studios are at war, Netflix has been landing Hollywood A-Listers year after year. Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver starred in Marriage Story in 2019. Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling took part in The Gray Man in 2022, while Chis Hemsworth has led the Extraction franchise since 2020.
Charlize Theron is another box office behemoth aligned with the streamer. She has two movies out with The Old Guard franchise, and is now partnering with Taron Egerton (from the Kingsman movies) for Apex. This film, directed by Baltasar Kormákur (2 Guns, Contraband), is a survivalist action flick that finds an Australian loner, Ben (Egerton), hunting Sasha (Theron) in the wilderness Down Under.
Kormákur packs in wild scene after wild scene, depicting Sasha as someone trying to prove she’s not your typical damsel-in-distress. She has a sentimental purpose driven by love, so she’ll do what it takes to emerge alive. Let’s dive further into Apex, what happens in the feud, who survives, and if there are any mid-credits or post-credits to create a new franchise. In addition, we’ll analyze if Netflix is able to deliver a solid movie that doesn’t feel like some tacky popcorn flick.
Short version: looking for an Apex ending explained? We’ve got you covered, right after this recap for context.
Netflix’s Apex Recap:
Kormákur tries to layer tons of endearment into Apex from the onset. The film opens with Sasha and her husband, Tommy (Eric Bana), making a tandem climb at the Troll Wall in Norway. The couple love living life on the edge, literally, but this part of the mountain massif is treacherous. As they camp out, Tommy indicates this isn’t for him anymore. He’s tired, aging, and feels like he’s risking their lives.
Granted, Sasha is the one pushing for these climbs. She’s an adrenaline junkie who loves the high of scaling these perilous slopes. She pokes fun at Tommy’s concern, but it soon turns into an argument. She even derides his favorite compass out of malice. As the minutes pass, the snowy weather gets calamitous. Unfortunately, when they take the tent down and try to descend, a mini-avalanche occurs. They try to avoid falling debris, only for Tommy to slip off while rappelling. He cracks his head on a rock and seemingly dies.
Sasha has no choice but to cut him loose from her rope in order to survive. His weight is literally dragging her down. Apart from the physical trauma, mental anguish erodes her sanity. She didn’t tie a specific knot that would have allowed her husband to rappel down faster. Thus, she blames herself, although it’s uncertain if the extra microseconds would have prevented the crumbling, falling rocks from hitting Tommy.
Watching Tommy drop into the darkness is a cruel way to open Apex pre-credits. However, it sets the tone for Sasha’s grit and perseverance down the line.
Five months later, Sasha travels to Tommy’s native Australia. She wants to visit one of his most beloved beaches to toss the compass into the water. She has a respite at the Wandarra National Park. Here, she is told by a ranger to be wary. Many families go missing when hiking, due to dangerous animals around or otherwise. Sasha plays it off, but she does encounter human predators right after: hecklers in a convenience store. They’re condescending, chauvinistic and misogynistic to the bone. Apex, clearly, pulls no punches at highlighting toxic masculinity.
Ben defends her when he drops off his beef jerky, Jenno’s, to the shop for sale. Sasha doesn’t take well to his chivalry. She wants to be an independent woman, adamant she can take care of herself. It adds drama and emotion. Theron is in such a vulnerable state; a stark contrast to her action roles like the Fast & Furious movies, to The Old Guard, to Aeon Flux, etc. Sasha can’t be too aggressive. She has to tread lightly and bite her tongue, sensing she is prey for the wannabe alphas around.
She eventually asks Ben for the best route after feeling bad for chiding him. He points out the mainstream direction while offering a tourist-friendly alternative. The latter is made for adventure seekers who crave kayaking, climbing and such. Sasha takes the latter, but drives off when Ben gets a little too cheeky about a woman going it alone. When she arrives, the scenery is lush and very much an eco-tourism dream. But Sasha is apprehensive after finding more arrogant males at the campsite.
The next morning, she gets suspicious when she finds some of her stuff, including her phone, missing. Sasha coincidentally meets Ben. Wow, who would have thought?
He cooks her breakfast, roasting some fish from the river and regaling her with stories about his past. It turns out, the jerky is named after his dead mother. Sasha empathizes with him, while he sympathizes with her when he decodes grief and trauma have driven her here. Sasha just wants closure and a personal eulogy near the water. Suddenly, things go south when Sasha realizes Ben has been stalking her. He observed her deriding the guys at the campsite and now makes it seem like they’re kindred spirits.
His view of soulmates gets even more grim when Sasha notices he has her headband on his wrist. With the guise gone, Ben turns into villain mode. He confesses he stole Sasha’s belongings and is intent on hunting her. Ben has a bag packed for her to flee. He loves a challenge, after all, nodding to creeps who want victims to resist. Ben gives her until the end of a song, The Chemical Brothers’ “Go,” — only then will he pursue with his crossbow.
Sasha bolts while a sadistic Ben enjoys his tune. It’s like Jigsaw meets Crocodile Dundee. Apex then jumps from chase to chase: Sasha in the water to hiking to running through the woods to falling down small cliffs. If you’re a fan of choppy editing, as well as Uncharted and Dora the Explorer, you may enjoy these silly scenes.
Oddly, Ben keeps catching her but refusing to murder her. In time, he takes her to his lair: a cave where Sasha sees all the victims. The ones that shake her the most is a family she saw on a video in one of the traps: the Carters. Ben admits he savors these kills because he soaks in everyone’s spirits. Such is the way of the apex predator. Ben has mental issues, cawing like various birds and making other animalistic noises. The beast-like dysphoria stems from an abusive past. It’s implied his mother abused him, creating a darkness within.
At this juncture, Ben’s idiosyncrasies start to feel like what James McAvoy did in Split and Glass. Ben has a schizophrenic energy, with some of Psycho’s Norman Bates embedded in him, too. Sasha wants to pity him, but knowing he’s a cannibal who made jerky from his victims cements he’s nothing more than a selfish, unforgivable monster. He showed no mercy to women or children, so she can’t see him as human.
Because the plot needs to move along, Sasha escapes the cave and almost drowns. Ben, tethered to her, gives chase, leading to a fight where she smashes his leg in with a rock. Both end up immobilized and chatting as night falls. Sasha has the upper-hand, but is still curious over Ben’s rituals and his obsession with finding the perfect, worthy kill. As he says, he wants Sasha to stay with him forever like his mother, teasing even more abuse than first imagined.
Sasha pivots and concocts a new plan. She indicates they can scale a different part of this canyon in sight. It’ll allow them to escape. Most importantly, Ben can seek treatment for his wounded leg. Infection’s setting in, so he has no choice. Seeing as it’s a tandem climb, Sasha requires a partner, so it’s a win-win for both. Once they cooperate.
Ben’s caveat is if she tries to betray him and cut him loose, he’ll drag her down with him. And so, a deadly alliance is formed in this gnarly part of the wild. Sasha maintains her composure and poise, while Ben maintains close surveillance in the interest of self-preservation.
Netflix’s Apex Ending Explained:
As the duo make the foreboding trek up, Sasha is secretly angling for an opening. She can’t rush the opportunity because she could die, too. She has to make it close to the top where she can free solo it. Ben senses this, but he doesn’t budge an inch on the ascent. His ego causes him to joke if Tommy looked like he was flying when he fell. It’s not wise to harass Sasha, but he can’t help it. Ben knows he’s essential. Just how much, well, that he underestimates.
In the final act, Sasha carves out a chance to put her ploy into action. While above Ben on a ledge, she quickly ties one connection point on the rope to a tree. Once Ben feels this tautness, he climbs up, thinking he’s latched onto Sasha. Sasha, though, is trying to shake the other joint section on the harness off. Ben susses it the upheaval and tries to yank her down. Sasha falls off, but luckily, the tree is there to grab onto.
Ben keeps yanking. Just when it seems like he’ll pull her down to her death, all his power and might do is undo the harness. Once it falls off, Ben is visibly dismayed. His rage has freed Sasha and condemned him to her judgment. Sasha unloosens the knot from the tree, aka the only thing attaching Ben to the cliff. Sasha lets the rope go, playing judge, jury and executioner. She basks in Ben screaming and falling at a high velocity onto the rocks below.
Ben’s death is quite grisly, but earned. After doling out karma, Sasha scales to the top and lays down, relieved after her brush with mortality. The movie ends with Sasha finding some campers. While she assumes more bad luck will ensue, it’s a benevolent couple who care for her. They take her into park. Sasha tells the ranger about the shrine and victims.
In the subsequent days, the authorities exhume the rotting corpses and divulge the truth about the serial killer to the public. Sasha gets her own closure when she finally makes it to the beach and throws the compass into the waves. She hears the birds screeching. But rather than think of Ben and his Kraven the Hunter knockoff aura, she remembers how beautiful life is. And that Tommy wouldn’t want her to take it for granted.
Does Netflix’s Apex Have a Post-Credits Scene?
Apex doesn’t have a mid-credits or a post-credits scene. The credits are layered by the theme played throughout Ben’s machiavellian chase: Trabant’s “Nasty Boy.” It speaks to Ben’s perverse perspective and how he objectifies people.
Does Netflix’s Apex Set Up a Sequel?
Apex is a one-and-done story. But if the viewership is high and subscribers are added, it’s easy to see Netflix expanding this franchise. The streamer can go the Scream route, with a serial killer related to Ben — family or friend — pursuing Sasha on some other high-octane adventure. Or it can use different regions with various precarious landscapes to tell similar stories with different killers.
No one thought Extraction could be franchised. But Netflix did it. The streamer loves working with Theron, too, so don’t rule anything out.
Is Netflix’s Apex a Good Movie?
Apex has good performances with its small cast. Egerton makes Ben claustrophobic and tension-ridden, while Theron’s Sasha is confined to someone needing to dig deep and find the apex within. Notably, when Theron was 15 in 1991, she witnessed her mother, Gerda, kill her father in self-defense. The mother faced no charges.
It may not be intentional but it feels like the actress harnesses that rage and combats the monster at play: someone she was supposed to trust after they pretended to care. Theron said she didn’t want to be haunted by the tragedy, which ties into Sasha not letting the grief of old pin her down.
But therein lies the problem. Apex tries to be a character portrait, making Sasha seem like a complete persona, but it’s light on the main anchor… Instead, the focus is on the manic, fraying Ben and his personality disorder.
As a result, Apex doesn’t carve out its own identity, especially from Split. More insight was required into Ben’s background, too, to humanize him and make him feel inventive. Mimicking animals the way he does feels silly, at times. Had the menace been given a zoology background or a deeper, nuanced connection to animals, perhaps seeing some kill his mother, it’d have made sense why he finds predators maiming prey as ethereal and fair in the great circle of life. A morbid Tarzan, if you will.
Instead, Apex ends up feeling like Saw-lite: all rhyme, and no reason. Note, going full Jigsaw wouldn’t have been a bad approach. Had the movie used more of the rugged, local terrain, like traps or prisons with crocodiles, spiders, snakes and dingos, it would have felt like it tried. Jai Courtney’s Dangerous Animals did this with its shark in 2025, making the landscape an equally-appreciable villain. And just as terrifying as the mastermind behind it. Black Mirror also touched on killers hunting people in parks in 2013’s “White Bear.”
Kormákur would have known how to pull this off, too. He directed Beast with Idris Elba, which focused on giant lions hunting people in Africa. Those action sequences felt like Jaws and Anaconda, but more unhinged (in a good way). But in Apex, no creatures are used, which might admittedly be a blessing in disguise due to how clunky the CGI is with the leads careening through forests and rivers.
There are also a few questionable moments in Jeremy Robbins’ script. One major faux pas is when Sasha finds a rock but instead of trying to bash Ben’s head in while he’s discombobulated, she tries to break the rope attaching them. Another one comes earlier when she does no research into the missing families when the ranger tells her death awaits.
Little things like these add up and chip away common sense and logic. Ultimately, a poor plot aside, the generic Apex needed more horror and psychological suspense to properly refine the narrative and bolster the motivations within. That said, while Apex isn’t a good film, many people may end up playing it in the background while working, doing chores or doom-scrolling. Which isn’t good immersion from an auteur’s standpoint.
But it may be a success once Netflix hits the KPI and metric of a view gained. Apex does sum up, however, Netflix’s tendency to adhere to sloppy scripts that seem churned out by AI. But hey, as long as cheques are there to cash, what really is artistic merit when Netflix is the apex of streamers?
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