Apex Ending: Inside the Charlize Theron Netflix Movie's Final Moments
Charlize Theron as Sasha in APEX.
Kane Skennar/Netflix
-
Share on Facebook
-
Share on X
-
Google Preferred
-
Share to Flipboard
-
Show additional share options
-
Share on LinkedIn
-
Share on Pinterest
-
Share on Reddit
-
Share on Tumblr
-
Share on Whats App
-
Send an Email
-
Print the Article
-
Post a Comment
Logo text
[This story contains spoilers for Apex.]
Silver linings during the pandemic were few and far between. But in the case of screenwriter Jeremy Robbins, receiving an involuntary breather from the breakneck pace of TV writers’ rooms provided him the runway to write a spec feature script called Apex. What also began as a way for the Washington D.C. native to not doomscroll social media all day is now Netflix’s newest chart-topper, starring Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton.
Set primarily in an Australian national park, the Baltasar “Balt” Kormákur-directed thriller chronicles a grieving adventurer named Sasha (Theron) as she explores the homeland terrain of her recently deceased partner, Tommy (Eric Bana). After the latter’s tragic accident during their climb of Norway’s Troll Wall, Sasha is focused more on kayaking than summiting, at least until she encounters a cannibalistic hunter named Ben (Egerton). Sasha is then forced to play a ritualistic cat-and-mouse game that Robbins considers to be his homage to Deliverance (1972) and The River Wild (1994).
Related Stories
Movies
'Apex' Review: Charlize Theron Faces Punishing Rock Climbs, Treacherous Rapids and Psychotic Taron Egerton in Crackling Survival Thriller
Movies
Charlize Theron Jabs at Timothée Chalamet's Ballet, Opera Remarks: "AI Is Going to Be Able to Do His Job in 10 Years"
Bookending the film’s opening tragedy on a mountainside, Sasha eventually comes face to face with another mountain she has to climb. The necessity of the moment is not only about fending off Ben, but also processing the grief and guilt she feels over Tommy. The metaphorical mountain is something Robbins also became deeply connected to throughout the career-elevating process of writing Apex.
“I found that my mountain was a career in Hollywood,” Robbins tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I was holding on with all of my strength as all the cracks to put your fingers in started to disappear. I was staring up at the sheer face of a cliff that felt impossible to climb, wondering, How am I going to find my way up?”
Robbins may have been inspired by the survival actioners he consumed during childhood, but it was Egerton’s involvement that added the right amount of creative fairy dust. He saw Ben as an unhinged Peter Pan who navigates the film’s national park like it’s his Neverland. Thus, the film evolves into a twisted take on the maternal bond between Peter and Wendy Darling, especially when Ben can’t bring himself to strangle Sasha to death during the film’s climax.
“In every version of the script, that was always the hardest moment for me to write. Any viewer is going to see it differently, but I do think [Ben] sees his mother in Sasha,” Robbins says. “There’s this moment of fragility in cradling her that I think is really beautiful. I also think he realizes that if he kills her like this, it goes against the ritualistic aspect that he’s built his entire identity around.”
Below, during a spoiler conversation with THR, Robbins also discusses his rewrites once Theron signed on, as well as the story behind the film’s memorable beef jerky. Then he offers up the properties he’d love to take a crack at in the wake of Apex’s success.
***
Jeremy Robbins attends Netflix’s Apex Premiere on April 22, 2026 in New York City.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Last year, I covered a writer-director named Drew Hancock. He’d primarily written for television, and during the pandemic, he decided to recalibrate by writing his way into a feature career. That decision resulted in a script called Companion. So when I first glanced at your résumé, I got the impression that you might have a similar story. Is that the case with Apex?
You’re not far off. Coming out of film school, I was just looking to work. I loved TV and movies equally, and TV was where I found that first toe in the door. I was excited to go from room to room and set to set. You learn a ton about the process of making something from script to screen.
Then 2020 rolled around, and the writers room that I was in closed and didn’t reopen. So I stood in the room I’m in now, thinking, What do I want to write that’s going to get me out of bed so I don’t doomscroll the news for several hours? The answer was to return to the kinds of movies and stories that I’ve loved since I was a kid, and those are largely survival-action thrillers.
So this was an opportunity to write so