Apex

If you’ve spent any time scrolling through the "New Releases" tab of a mid-tier streaming service lately, you’ve likely encountered a very specific kind of digital poster: a floating head of a legendary 1980s action icon looking vaguely confused while standing in front of a blue-tinted explosion. Apex is the ultimate manifestation of this phenomenon. It’s a film that exists because the international VOD market demands "content" with recognizable faces, regardless of whether those faces belong to actors who actually want to be there. I watched this on a Tuesday afternoon while wearing only one sock—the other having been lost to the great laundry abyss—and that sense of being slightly incomplete perfectly mirrored the experience of watching Bruce Willis navigate a science-fiction hunt.

The Art of the 'Geezer Teaser'

In the world of contemporary cinema, Apex belongs to a subgenre often colloquially (and perhaps a bit cruelly) dubbed the "geezer teaser." These are films designed to maximize a star's presence in the marketing while minimizing their actual time on set. Here, Bruce Willis plays Thomas Malone, a wrongfully imprisoned ex-cop given a chance at freedom if he can survive being hunted on a remote island by a group of wealthy socialites. It’s a premise we’ve seen everywhere from The Most Dangerous Game to Hard Target, but directed by Edward Drake, who previously collaborated with Willis on Cosmic Sin.

The film is a fascinating artifact of the 2020s streaming era. It’s clear that Willis (who we now know was battling aphasia during this period) was filmed in a bubble. He spends a vast majority of the runtime wandering through the woods of British Columbia, occasionally looking at a piece of fruit or standing behind a tree, while the "hunters" scream at each other in entirely different locations. The editing is a heroic feat of trying to make it look like everyone is in the same movie. It’s basically a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek where the hider has a union-mandated nap schedule.

Scenery Chewing and Forest Strolls

While Willis is the name on the marquee, the movie actually belongs to Neal McDonough as Dr. Samuel Rainsford. If you know McDonough from his work in Band of Brothers or as the villainous Damien Darhk in the "Arrowverse," you know he has a gear that most actors don't even possess. In Apex, he finds that gear and then rips the lever off. McDonough is doing enough acting for everyone in the cast, the crew, and probably the catering team as well. He is intense, blue-eyed, and seems to be having a contest with himself to see how many syllables he can squeeze into a single sneer.

The rest of the hunters, including characters played by Corey Large (who also co-wrote and produced) and Alexia Fast, are essentially fodder. They represent the worst tropes of contemporary "prestige" villains—all entitlement and no tactical awareness. The film attempts to inject some social commentary about the ultra-rich and the commodification of life, but it’s hard to take a "eat the rich" message seriously when the movie itself feels like it was assembled in a boardroom to satisfy a tax incentive.

The Ghost in the Machine

Technically, Apex is a mixed bag that leans heavily into its low-budget Sci-Fi roots. The "teleportation" effects look like something out of a mid-90s PC game, and the futuristic weaponry has that distinct "spray-painted Nerf gun" aesthetic. However, the cinematography by Wai Sun Cheng occasionally catches a nice frame of the Canadian wilderness, providing a visual reprieve from the flat, digital sheen that plagues so many VOD releases.

The action choreography is where the film truly stumbles. For a movie about a deadly game of cat and mouse, there is a shocking lack of... well, hunting. The hunters spend so much time bickering and accidentally killing each other that Malone barely has to do anything. He’s less of an elite predator and more of a guy who accidentally wandered onto a paintball course and decided to wait for the bus. Yet, there’s a strange, hypnotic quality to it. I found myself fascinated by the production's "smoke and mirrors" approach to filmmaking—how they use radio chatter and off-screen noises to imply a world that clearly didn't fit in the budget.

Ultimately, Apex is a movie that tells us more about the state of the film industry in the 2020s than it does about its own characters. It’s a product of the "content" machine, a film that exists to be clicked on, half-watched, and forgotten. While Neal McDonough provides enough campy energy to keep the pulse flickering, the film is a somber reminder of the end of an era for one of cinema's greatest icons. If you’re a completionist for 2020s genre oddities, it’s worth a look for the sheer weirdness of its construction, but don't expect to find the "Apex" of the action genre here.