Apex it’s a dizzying film with small characters and a very scary villain.
But while The Survival of Baltasar Kormákur has some amazing action sequences and stunning cinematography, there’s also a beautiful dark origin story tucked in the cracks.
So what happens, and does Jeremy Robbins’ script suggest what is the true motive of the movie’s killer? Let’s strip it down.
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What Apex about?
The film follows Sasha (Charlize Theron), a rock climber who struggles to come to terms with the accident that killed her partner, Tommy (Eric Bana). Sasha visits a remote national park in Australia on a solo kayaking trip down the river, but her trip is enhanced by an encounter with Ben (Taron Egerton), a ranger determined to hunt her to death – seemingly, at first, just for his own twisted fun.
Fortunately, Sasha is no stranger to surviving extreme situations. What follows is a cat-and-mouse chase through water, canyons, and cliffs in a brutal hour-long battle for survival.
Credit: Kane Skennar / Netflix
How does Sasha escape from Ben?
Just as Ben has Sasha cornered in his murder cave (more on that later), he makes a bid for freedom: bite off part of her ear and jump off the ledge into a nearby river. Sasha’s hands are tied, and she is attached to a rope that Ben plans to use to lift her into the air; this enables him to attach himself to himself while the pair are dragged along by the current. When they finally shower, Sasha breaks Ben’s leg with a rock before fighting him.
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The problem? The only way back to safety is through a large cliff, which they must climb to escape. Ben threatens to pull Sasha off the wall if she tries to unbuckle her harness and leave him behind, but halfway through she manages to do just that when she’s partially hidden by an overhanging ledge. Ben is thrown to his death while Sasha single-handedly frees the rest of the wall to safety.
The radio news broadcast at the end reveals that the authorities have found 20 bodies in Ben’s cave, and that he is responsible for the disappearance of many people in the area which was said to have been caused by a terrible situation.
Credit: Kane Skennar / Netflix
What is Ben’s true motivation?
Although the film doesn’t tell us everything about Ben, we are given enough clues. The fact that he is a serial killer is undeniable, but although his original motivation seems to be the desire to hunt human prey, the scene in the cave reveals a dark secret: Ben is actually a cannibal who lifts his victims up like animals, eats parts of them and turns the other parts into homemade jerky that he sells at a nearby store.
“There are indigenous peoples who say that in order to capture the spirit of your victim, you must eat their liver,” Ben told Sasha. “The trick is to find the spirit to capture, I guess.”
It’s not clear what makes Ben this creepy, but his constant talking about his mother seems to be our biggest clue that he’s been this way for a long time.
“She was special,” Ben tells Sasha when she asks about a picture of him with his mom. “He was the first. Do you hear? Now you live with me all the time. I will keep you with me.”
It seems that Ben has become too engrossed in the twisted concept of hunting and eating human prey as a form of powerful growth.
Apex now streaming on Netflix.
