If you have watched Charlize Theron in her multiple action avatars on screen (think Furiosa in Mad Max, Andy in The Old Guard, Lorraine in Atomic Blonde, et al), then you wouldn’t think of ever getting on the wrong side of her. Taron Egerton seemingly hasn’t, which is perhaps why we see him as the predator trying to make quick work of Theron as prey in the new Netflix thriller Apex. At least — tongue firmly in cheek — he should have taken a dekko at her serial-killer act in Monster — that won the always edgy South African-born actress an Oscar more than two decades ago.

Playing the serial killer in Apex is Egerton’s Ben, a psychopath with his own hall of anthropophagy fame, running wild in the Australian wilderness. His latest potential victim is Sasha (Theron), a resilient, thrill-seeking adventurer, who he chases through land, water and forest in this Baltasar Kormakur-directed survival thriller.

The filmmaker from Iceland has a knack for telling stories about people in extreme environments — whether on the slopes of the Himalayas (Everest), on the run from a man-eating lion (Beast) or stuck in frozen waters for hours (The Deep). In Apex, we first meet Sasha rappelling down the Troll Way in Norway (so far, so CGI), partner Tommy (Eric Bana) for company. Tommy mouths lines like: “Luck is like anything else you take up a mountain... eventually it will run out”, and Bana looks like he would rather throw himself off a cliff than star in this film. No surprises that he does exactly that, with a grieving Sasha, a few months later, finding herself in the great outdoors of Australia where she aims to kayak down white rapids alone.

Straight up, she is warned that not only is this treacherous terrain — especially for a woman going it solo — but that many, over the last few years, have mysteriously gone missing while traversing the fictional Wandarra National Park. But nothing — not even a group of slimy, shifty-eyed men trying to get familiar — is able to deter Sasha. And when friendly local Ben asks her whether she wants to opt for the “easy way or the hard way”, you know that there is trouble ahead.

Mirroring the vibe of films like Eden Lake and Wolf Creek, the thrill in Apex quickly turns to horror with Sasha fighting for her life. Fuelled by violence, action and gore, Apex becomes a race for survival — “it is not a game, it is a ritual” — between predator and prey. The 95-minute watch boils down to being a two-hander between Sasha and Ben. There aren’t any twists — it is pretty much exactly what you expect it to be, with Apex content to remain a paint-by-the-numbers genre film in its theme, tone and treatment.

Things, however, get pretty brutal pretty soon, and if you don’t have the nerve to stomach visuals of naked bodies hanging in a cave with the perpetrator talking about wolfing down body parts after tenderising them in his “special homemade salt brine”, we suggest you stay away. Even otherwise, the drama is quite nerve-wracking in Apex, but Kormakur is unable to sustain the film’s sporadic crackling energy.

Apex embraces the palpably beautiful but precarious topography in which it is set, but that is only when cinematographer Lawrence Sher is at work. Some parts of the film are pointedly the work of computer graphics, with the makers not paying heed to the need to seamlessly blend the real visuals with the created ones. For a film that has spent $150 million, that is a shame.

With the film comprising only two main players, it is up to Theron and Egerton to match wit and wordplay, tenacity and courage to power Apex. Egerton — all manic and muscled — gnarls (watch out for those teeth!) quite literally, but the menace comes off a tad pretentious.

Ultimately, it is left to Theron to do what she does best — overpower her adversary with a lot more than just pepper spray in her arsenal. At 50, the actor is fitter and stronger than most 20-year-olds. For Apex, Theron reportedly hung off cliffs and swam through lightning-fast water, doing most of her stunts herself. And here I am struggling to get in my 10,000 steps a day.

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